Menus, Ecommerce & SEO

[BeckyKey]

Hi

Our Dev team have updated our website with a new menu structure, they have given us 2 options to choose from.

1st option I think is better for SEO - this will be showing top 8 categories and then subcategories once you hover over category 1. Not much change from our current structure, just a slightly different layout.

(I have added an image example of what option1 will look like)

2nd option - is preferred by management - shows all 24 categories & no subcategories.

My question is, will removing the current subcategories from the main menu make them lose rankings & make them harder to rank in future? I'm guessing everything will move down a level in the structure and lost page authority...

Does anyone have any articles/case studies to prove this point?

Any help is much appreciated

Becky

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[RobertFisher]

Hello Becky,

I saw no one had responded to your question and I want to assist you. I looked at the slide with the sub categories and the issue is more of a UI/UX issue and not an SEO issue per se. If you have a massive number of products under each main category, it can be unwieldy to some searchers to have it all in a single row. Does the site break it down anywhere else? So, currently, under office do you have these sub categories on the site? office/office-supplies, etc. ? Or is each item its own category? .com/cable-management, .com/presentation-and-displays, etc.? (I am guessing it is the second option here and each is its own category.)

IMO, the main thing is how does your searcher use the site currently and are you improving it by adding sub categories - for current customers? to get new customers? Also, I would ask your dev team about the URL structures for each and how they are changing. Remember, if you change them you have to do 301 redirects for each affected url. If you have thousands of products that could become a bit of an issue for your dev team, but there are ways to deal with that.

If you are changing urls then I would pay attention to what keywords are important and use that as a guide for category vs. sub category. If you have any questions, ask and I will respond to you.

I do hope this helps.

Robert

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[BeckyKey]

Hi Robert,

Thank you for getting back to me. We break our structure down, so there won't be masses of products under the main categories, it will be split into subcategories & then split down again to level 3 subcategories. Yes those categories you mentioned are on site.

We don't show the level 3 subcategories in the menu as they haven't given us functionality to do so, but when you click through they will be shown on another landing page. This does make it more difficult for us to rank these level 3 pages and they tend to get lower rankings/traffic than the level 2 subcategories.

Whichever option we choose will be tested, I am just concerned from an SEO point of view, if I remove all the current subcategories from the menu, will the rankings be affected long term?

Can you ever rank a subcategory well if it's not linked from the homepage? Surely if the subcategory is another click away from the homepage & only linked from the main category page, rather than the homepage, authority will be diluted making it that bit harder?

I know UX is a big factor, but my worry is until we go live and test it we won't know and the damage to SEO will already be done. So I need to put forward my views first.

Thank you

[BeckyKey]

Thank you for your input totally agree

Did the new menu work better from a UX point of view?

I just need to make sure I get my point across with as much back up as possible, so if things don't go well, I can say I told you so, not in so many words..

Thanks!

[RobertFisher]

Yes, a page can rank well even when there is no direct link to the homepage. Don't worry about how much authority is passed from the homepage it is not nearly the issue you think it is. If you want it to improve in terms of ability to rank and it is ecommerce, you need good content written and images and I would suggest ensuring product markup, review markup, etc. 
There is no way any site with even a reasonable number of pages can have everything originate from the homepage. You have to look at the homepage as more of a: how do I get there now that I am on your site? 
Having looked at what you showed, you can do the menu either way without a significant SEO effect in and of itself (menu choice). Follow good SEO principles, URL, title tags, H1 etc. for your on page and you will get there.

[BeckyKey]

Hi Robert

Thank you for the reply. We do include mark up, H1's etc, but as some of our categories are so competitive, it is a struggle to rank for example, a level 3 > http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/mesh-office-chairs

This is a lower level category page, we need to mark this up with product listing schema, but each product page has schema.

I am working on adding some content to this page, but other than that - I am finding it difficult to do anything else on page to help improve SEO visibility? Are there any suggestions?

I am also working on user guides - but then this could potentially rank above the category page - and wouldn't convert but help more with research/brand awareness.

Thank you

Becky

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