Navigation Links

[DenverKelly]

Our developers typically have a CSS driven html menu at the top of the page with links to inside pages. They then have the same links in the footer.

Does this double navigation cause any SEO issues or does Google disregard the second set of links?

Thanks,

Mark

[ClickConsult]

Hi Mark,

It's a bit pointless having the same links in the menu at the top and then again within the footer. It's unlikely that users will click the links within the footer and as an SEO, you want to minimize the amount of links on a page as much as possible.

In reply to your question for whether Google disregards the second set of links, it depends how you interpret "disregard". Google will still crawl, follow (and the links will still count when it comes to pagerank calculation). Google will however disregard the anchor text - have you heard of the first link counts rule?

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/results-of-google-experimentation-only-the-first-anchor-text-counts

There are however 3 methods to avoid the 1st link counts rule:

http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/3-ways-to-avoid-the-first-link-counts-rule

Good luck!

[R-L-M]

In this case the anchor text is identical.

[DenverKelly]

Sorry - logged in with my agency account! The links are identical in the drop down menu and at the bottom of the page. I'm inclined to ask the designer to remove the footer links.

[DenverKelly]

What would the effect of no-following the footer links? Would it have any impact on the followed links at the top of the page?

[donford]

Hi Mark,

My understanding is having Nofollow links will dilute the juice this passed to the dofollow links.

You can read more on that on from Rand.. here

I will veer off a little from what Mark said in that having the navigation in the footer as well as the top header area, maybe okay if the site warrants it. Most all cases I would follow Mark's advice, but in a case where the navigation in the bottom can be perceived has "helpful" to the user, then it would be okay to use it there as well.

In the end you can't always do everything that is considered "Good SEO Practices" simply because it helps your SEO, you must also follow good site design and useability practices. If having the navigation in the footer helps the user, and is aesthetically pleasing then I would say it is okay. The real trick of course is to merge Good SEO with both aesthetics and useability.

Hope that helps,

Don