Using Anchor Link in the Main Navigation

[BAO.Agency]

Has anyone ever used anchor links as a drop-down in a sub-collection from the main navigation and does it have any negative impact on link equity?

My client has large product collections and sub-collections, these are then separated into further subsections which are open within the same page (see attached). What I want to do ideally is in the main navigation feature 'Mad Hatter Costumes and Accessories'. This will obviously have a # in the URL though and I am was wondering if this might hurt the chance of the page ranking?

If anyone has any experience in this it would be really helpful!!

Thanks in advance

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[effectdigital]

AFAIK this has no negative impact on SEO, but is symptomatic of another issue which does impact SEO. Putting too much stuff, or too much content on a single URL - thus 'diffusing' Google's ability to nail down 'the primary topic' of the URL (which can make it rank badly)

It's not the anchor links that cause the poor rankings though, it's the ill-thought out information architecture and site design (IMO)

Google won't rank those anchor URLs by the way. Just the main page. But it's not like you'll get some kind of crazy anchor using penalty or something, that doesn't exist

[BAO.Agency]

Thanks for your response!

Do you think you would lose the equity from the link being in the main navigation though? In theory, it would still point at www.domain/subcollection but it would then also have a hashtag at the end of the URL as well and I don't know if that would impact my subcollection from ranking?

[effectdigital]

depends how many of these you're planning to have. In any case, the loss (which may occur) should be very fractional and not super damaging. If you lose 0.05% traffic but gain +2% conversion rate, then really you're winning overall. Sometimes good SEO involves making a decision that slightly hurts the 'purist' SEO, in order to focus on revenue and 'real business' KPIs (which matter more, which bosses care about more)

As long as you can reason the trade-off which you made and it falls in your favour (overall), then you have done a good job

Your bigger problem is that these new links may push other links further out of the user's reach and / or further down the code / page. If this happens, other links may not supply quite the same SEO authority which they did before

I certainly think your proposal is worth testing. Measure both the CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) and SEO impacts. If overall you take in more $, then the fact that SEO has a slightly bruised cheek is really just a matter of vanity. Think with your business head

[BAO.Agency]

Agree with you on entirely on optimising for the conversion, which is why I was looking at this solution in the first place. It's a case of balancing between the UX and the ranking I suppose!

Thanks for your thoughts and help.

[effectdigital]

Not a problem