Flyout Menu Interfering with Optimization

[Show Me Cables]

Hello!

I am doing in-house optimization at an e-commerce site (find it by searching my username or go to showmecables.com) and I am a relative newbie to SEO. I have been learning a lot as I go along.

I recently viewed our site with Lynx and realized something that our webmaster and all-around tech guru had mentioned before: our js flyout menu is interfering with our optimization. But it was not until I took a look using Lynx that I realized the severity of the problem. This flyout menu is packed with over 500 links.

The worst part is, obviously, that the menu appears on every single page. I've heard Google doesn't particularly like more than 100 links per page, but we have 500 links appearing on every page before you get to the actual content of that page.

To me, this seems like low-hanging fruit. By changing the flyout menu so that the spider sees only the top level categories we would be making a big stride forward in optimizing our site. Only about 20, instead of 500 links would appear before the actual content of that page.

But apparently this will require a lot of effort to change this and I may have to do a lot of convincing to get this change made (I don't have the programming skills to discuss this menu in a technical way much less build the thing myself). I think it is well worth it, but since I'm rather new to SEO I wanted to get some more feedback.

Is it really important to change this as quickly as possible? Is there anything else I should know? What should we do once we actually make the change, just submit a new sitemap? Is there anything else we should expect once we make the change?

[Onestop]

I am a newbie as well dealing with the same thing as my site is being rebuilt. Here is the little I have found out.

1) put all the java in external files so google doesn't have to read it. Easy fix and very necessary.
2) put the category links as text in on the page including a site map. (looks like you have already done this). Bots should then crawl you a little better since they can ignore all the junk and get to the meat.
3) Personally I would clean up the page as a whole. Read "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug for a quick look at what you need to correct.

I am using flyouts out of necessity b/c of the 400+ main categories I sell in. I am not so sure they are necessary in your case (at least the way they are being used)

Hope this helps.

[Show Me Cables]

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm going to look into your suggestions, and it looks like I'm going to have to learn more about java, which is fine and I'm eager to do it.

Don't Make Me Think is being passed around the office. We agree the site needs to be cleaned up as a whole. A new site is on the distant horizon, but we have limited resources (so I hope you're right about that easy fix).

That's part of my problem and I guess that's what I'm really asking here. Correcting the flyout menu is #1 on my priority list, but I'm looking at it from a very biased point of view. Should correcting the flyout menus take precedent over the rest of the site "cleaning up"?

Also, if I can get into it a little deeper, we have all of the links that contain the URL rewrites in the menu itself. So if we took the menu out, we would also lose the URL rewrites and would have to stick those back in somewhere else. To make a long story short, as a temporary solution, we should just stick them on a spammy page that has all of the rewritten URLs where the spider can reach them. I know having such a page is less than ideal, but as it stands now every page on our site looks like such a spam page.

[Onestop]

I don't think you need to loose the sidebar menu. There is nothing wrong with it. I do not know your product catalog too well, but as long as things are grouped properly you can leave the flyout. I think the fly-outs in the middle of the page are the ones that do not make much sense. It is adding to an already confusing layout.

Leave the sidebar. Keep the flyout. Just put the java in external files (I don't know how to do this but I understand it is a simple process). That can be done up front without changing anything else. This would allow your top categories to get read properly. Then you can work on deep crawling, and page layout. Yes, do put up a basic sitemap page with text only. I don't think it needs to have every single url though. Just put the top categories on the page, maybe even a secondary category. Bots will find the rest.

Hope this helps

[Onestop]

Correction. I forgot the sidebar navigation itself is in the java. My mistake. You need text links somewhere. The bottom of the page could be crawled if bots could bypass all the java and get to it. That should be a start. Long term I would consider moving the flyout options to the top of the page horizontally and use regular navigation down the sidebar. Just a thought.

[fthead9]

Junk the java menu entirely. You would be much better served using CSS drop down menus, which are 100% search engine friendly. Here's a couple of links to tutorials on CSS drop menus, http://www.alistapart.com/articles/hybrid
http://www.seoconsultants.com/css/menus/horizontal/

Having a site map with rich keyword anchor text will also help. Make sure to organize it by category and split it into spider friendly chunks, i.e. 100 links or less per map page.

[Onestop]

Originally Posted by fthead9

Junk the java menu entirely. You would be much better served using CSS drop down menus, which are 100% search engine friendly. Here's a couple of links to tutorials on CSS drop menus, http://www.alistapart.com/articles/hybrid
http://www.seoconsultants.com/css/menus/horizontal/

Having a site map with rich keyword anchor text will also help. Make sure to organize it by category and split it into spider friendly chunks, i.e. 100 links or less per map page.

Agreed. I am going with CSS as well. However, there are still plenty of folks out there (including ones who write on this site) that believe you should still put your CSS code in external files. Personally I think that you have so many links in the dropdowns that you should still put the CSS in external files. Google will only swallow so much at once. That is exactly what I am doing. The CSS will be external leaving the main category headers as text links on the homepage (only) for google to crawl.

[Show Me Cables]

Yeah, I think I should be more specific when I say "search-engine friendly."

In our case, I think we want the spider not to go any deeper than the top level categories. So our menu would contain a total of, say, 500 categories on numerous levels, but the spider would only see the top 20.

One of our competitors who does this well is lanshack.com
http://www.lanshack.com/make-cat5E.aspx


So I'm going to look into Onestop's advice about putting the code in external files.

[cryptblade]

Originally Posted by Show Me Cables

our js flyout menu is interfering with our optimization. But it was not until I took a look using Lynx that I realized the severity of the problem. This flyout menu is packed with over 500 links.

I might be late to this one here, but a JSP menu itself is not SE-friendly. JSP links are not visible to the search engines as they are coded in JSP - not HTML. Engines give weight to HTML/text-based links.

So can you clarify that your JSP menu links are in JSP - or are they enhanced by JSP with HTML-base? If the former, then you have nothing to worry about as relating to Google and the 100 links guideline. If the latter, then you need to restructure the site's architecture. Yes, CSS menus make it more SE-friendly, but you still need to restructure the site architecture.