When working on navigation, is it best for product collections to appear under multiple menu headings or just the one that defines it the most?

[mad1693]

We are an e-commerce site selling outdoor clothing/equipment and I am managing the SEO with only a years worth of experience under my belt! We are looking at changing the navigation as we are selling a bigger range of products and we would like to make it more user friendly.

When looking at both crawlability and customer friendly navigation too, is it best to list product collections under whatever menu it applies to, or just the one that it best falls under. For example, 'climbing shoes', should that go under 'outdoor footwear' and 'climbing equipment' or just 'outdoor footwear'? Does it even matter from an seo perspective?! I know that being user-friendly is more important but just wondering if its less or more important for page rankings if its linked to from less or more pages internally. Thanks!

[EGOL]

Place them in menu headings that are relevant and useful for the visitors.

You don't want to have customers thinking... Why did they put this crap in here.   As soon as they start seeing "contamination" in your menu their shopping in that category will end.

What do you think of the Amazon SERPs where they are showing crap in their SERPs that does not match or even relate to the querry?  It has a really bad odor to me.