I have a site http://www.getonmyspace.com/ and as you can see it is getting very very long. I was thinking of changing the left and right nav menus to dropdown and generally shortening the site. How would this effect the site seo wise? Do the se's still read them the same and what sort of dropdown would you suggest. Thanks
Thanks Alan I see there are different types, javscript,dhtml etc etc.....................does it matter which?
Yes it does matter. Javascript is not SEO friendly never code a navigation menu with this. Use DHTML. Look at the source code for a site using this dropdown menu code. It looks like normal HTML links.
Alan is right that converting to a dropdown doesn't necessarily mean you will take an SEO hit... But it depends on how you implement the dropdowns. If you are going to implement them with JavaScript then yes you can take a huge hit... If you implement the dropdowns using nested unordered lists of links (nested <ul> elements) combined w/ CSS then there should be no hit. Personally I think you have way too many links on your home page. It's a weak information architecture. And converting from what you have to dropdowns is not going to help this. Linking to every page on your site from every other page on your site (which is what you appear to be doing) creates a mesh. You could improve on the SEO of your site with an "inverted L" menu system. By "inverted L" I mean combining a top navigation with a context sensitive left navigation. The left nav basically becomes your submenu when you click on an item in the top navigation. You'd be better servered if your top nav appeared as it does today, but each section in the top nav had it's own specific submenu that appears as the left nav and only apply to that top nav section. For instance when you click on Comments at the top, your left nav would change to only have links to the various comment codes pages... And when you click on Generators in the top nav, your left nav would switch to only having links to your generators. This can be done without changing any URLs. It's only modifying how you pages interlink. Trying to link to every page on your site from your home page greatly reduces your ability to control the flow of PR and relevancy around your site. It makes it hard for Google and other engines to determine the hierarchy of your site (which pages are major section pages, which are sub-sections, which are detail pages, etc.) Have you noticed how your home page has a visible Google Toolbar PR of 2/10 while every other page on your site has no visible Google Toolbar PR (not 0/10 which is TBPR=0... your have NO visible TBPR). This is likely because Google is your dividing your home page's PR over so many outbound links that it is severely diluted. Additionally Google can't figure out what the other most important pages on the site are (they should be your section pages... ones that come up when you click on something in the top nav). There is no hierarchy in your linking structure. Most people don't think about what I call the flow of relevancy... but if each item in your global nav is about a different topic, and I drill down on one of those major sections (click on Comments, for example, in the top nav) then the Comments page should be all about comments. It should be targeting your head keywords for Comments related terms. If I drill down even farther by clicking on a link to a particular comment page in the left nav, that particular comment page should get even more specific and target longer longer tail Comments related terms. The deeper you go into the site, the more specific you get and the longer tail the terms you should target. If you go with something like the "inverted L", your Comments page will be mostly linking to other more specific comments pages (see the flow of relevancy now?). You will still have links to a few major section pages in the top nav but most of the links are to Comments related pages. Because you have fewer outbound links on each page, you'll pass them more PR. When you build these theme pyramids or topic pyramids, you have more relevant pages linking to each page on your site (See Brett Tabke's posts on webmasterworld.com about theme pyramids). I'll bet if you try this your major section pages (one linked to in the top nav) will go to PR1 the next time Google puts out a PR update. It will improve your rankings as well because you now have mostly relevant pages linking to other pages about the same topic (either more or less specific depending on the depth into the site). Add breadcrumbs to each page as well to reinforce this...
Add simple links in drop down no java script....add drop down in dhtml...this way you can build a strong internal linking ,,,,,,
As per my experience any little changes in your site will affect you if your market is VERY VERY COMPETITIVE. But the effect will be less & for short period if your site has good back link, strong contains etc.
MKInfo - Some other posters have already provided excellent answers. I'll follow-up with a comment that it can and will impact your SEO depending on how it's implemented. A few years ago, I built a site for a client who had a very deep site with a significant number of pages and sub-pages. Against my advice, he had me implement a java script menu. His thought was that the enhanced navigation would offset any loss of SEO benefits. By the next PR update, the site went from a 3 to a 1 and the number of indexed pages nearly to almost nothing. I removed the script and went back to a text based menu, and the site eventually returned to it's prior positioning. Obviously, some other factors could have played a role in that scenario as well, but I suspect that the JavaScript menu was the fundamental culprit.
Changing the dropdown menus will have no effect on SEO, but using the wrong design technique will have a major effect on indexing. Any javaScript or Flash based navigation concept will kill your site. We use only CSS dropdown menus now and try to keep it as simple as possible. What ever you do though, back up the concept with a Site Map that has all major pages on it. We also found that complete, Absolute URL work best. We don't us the title attribute because it confuses the navigation.
Thankyou guys for all the great input. I have read it all with great interest. I haven't changed anything for now but my pr shot up big time since I started this thread with the main page going up to a 4 and load of internal pages having 3,2 or 1 now. It's getting to a stage where I dare not change anything as the site is a good earner with traffic mostly from Google and I would hate it to drop. I just found this very interesting article. http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm