Static text links or DHTML?

Large site with massive menu

[Katie_Venra]

Hi all.

I need some advice on which direction to go with a site i run. Presently the site has all text links running down the left hand side, the problem is though more and more new content is being added each day and the left hand menu is becoming overcrowded.

Google has always spidered my site very well cause of the text links however the site is now getting to the stage where it gets bloated, so what do i choose?

Should i go down the road of DHTML drop down menu's and risk having google not spidering the links?

Or can i start to teir off the left hand menu so instead of...

index.html--->page2.html

...i can do...

index.html--->page2.html--->page3.html

Whats the best solution taking into consideration i want to keep googles no.1 ranking that it usually places me at for various keywords?

[pleeker]

I'm generally conservative, so since you've stated that you don't want to lose SE rankings, I would avoid switching to DHTML. In fact, I'd avoid making any major shift in how your site menu is presented (because a client of ours recently suffered for several months after a simple switch from graphical buttons to text links).

Do a search for suckerfish dropdowns, which offer a CSS- and javascript-based method for replicating what DHTML would offer you -- and without, I believe, negatively impacting the crawlability of your menu.

[Katie_Venra]

Yup, i heard about some drop downs not being search friendly. I ran a serach in google for suckerfish dropdowns and it looks like theres a LOT of coding involved :(

[lovethecoast]

We have the same "problem" -- too much content on one of our sites. What we've done is have our main menu across the top of the site (6 links) with each link leading to a page with a left-hand menu structure that can contain dozens of links. For instance:

category
-sub cat
-sub cat
-sub cat
--sub sub cat
--sub sub cat
--sub sub cat
--sub sub cat
-sub cat
--sub sub cat
--sub sub cat
--sub sub cat
----sub sub sub cat
----sub sub sub cat
----sub sub sub cat
----sub sub sub cat
----sub sub sub cat

You get the idea... each sub-cat and children are hidden by default through css. When one of the sub-cat's is clicked on, the page is loaded and in the footer of the page, we have a javascript command to display the child of that sub-cat.

To the user, we're not overloading them with too many visible links, and to the SE's, we're still showing all the links they need to see. If someone comes in with js turned off, the page just doesn't display all the sub-cats' children, but on each main sub-cat page, we also have "quick links" across the top that take them to children pages.

Makes almost all of our pages no more than 2 links deep from any other page on the site.

Hope that makes sense.

[pleeker]

Hmmm. I think if you look more closely it's not as bad as you're thinking. They pretty much give you the code, and you just rewrite it. :)

Of course, if the site menu is as big as you say yours is, that might be a lot of rewriting!

[Katie_Venra]

Well, theres about 100 links on the left menu, some of those pages hold more links going to a 3rd teir page. All in all the site has just under 700 pages all with relevant content.

If ya look at my profile youll see what i mean, link is in there.

However that idea about having main catagory links at the top, then splitting the menu...that sounds nice, ill need to look into that.

[pleeker]

Katie - I don't envy your task. :)

[lovethecoast]

Looking at the link in your profile, I think you did a bang-up job at presenting lots of information in a user-friendly and SE-friendly format!

[decaff]

Please be careful using hidden text...like at the very bottom of your home page...this is not advisable....take this text and incorporate it into the site with helpful content..that can be read by human visitors..

Your background color is 000033 and so is this text...if nothing else..change this text out to FFFFFF ... make it visible...

Looks like all your files are in root? if so...if you make a drastic change at this stage in the game...say start to create directories this could affect your rankings...
if you decide to use a DHTML menu...this is not a problem...because you can keep your current left nav and make sure that your site map holds all your pages on the site and that it is readily linked off the home page and all of your pages...

You should definitely create a site map is you don't have one (I couldn't find an obvious link and this sitemap link should be one of the first ones that the spiders crawl...

[webtress]

Katie_Venra, another issue to consider is pr now I normally give less than 2 hoots about pr however if your home page currently enjoys a good pr, from my understanding that pr is spread to the interior pages that have links pointing to them (if you got why lose it). Using a dhtml menu those interior pages may lose a bit of their pr value. #*$! has css Drop-Down Menus, Horizontal Style

Whatever menu system you chose you have your work cut out. Keep vistors to your site in mind (where did that link go? it was right here last week)

[henry0]

Simplify the left hand nav bar
And offer from each page a very detailed "Site map"
Using text links, build it with CSS positioning so it will be very clean.

Henry

[stever]

Do a search for suckerfish dropdowns, which offer a CSS- and javascript-based method for replicating what DHTML would offer you

dhtml IS html augmented by CSS and Javascript. (Dynamic HTML)

Not trying to be too picky, but this quite often comes up and there seems to be a lot of confusion about "dropdown" menus or "Javascript navigation" or "DHTML".

The difference between the types of menu and their SE-friendliness is based on the way they use Javascript, not that they use it at all.

In other words, just because a menu uses javascript or is called a "DHTML menu" does not mean it is SE-unfriendly.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming...

[pleeker]

In other words, just because a menu uses javascript or is called a "DHTML menu" does not mean it is SE-unfriendly.

No argument here. However, most of the things I've seen that are advertised as a "DHTML menu" are quite SE unfriendly, and I was comparing that to Suckerfish method which is SE friendly.

My bad for not choosing words a bit more carefully.