Usability vs. SEO in navigation structure

[Tonearm]

A while back, based on info from this forum, I reworked my website to navigate like so from the top page:

index.html
|
v
product category -> all products in category
|
v
product subcategory
|
v
all products in subcategory

This makes sense from an SEO perspective, but my best-converting pages are the "all products in category" pages. From a conversions perspective, I should link from index.html straight to "all products in category" instead of linking there through "product category". I could do that and link from "all products in category" to "product category" which links to "product subcategory" but then I'm requiring 2 clicks from index.html before the product subcategory links are displayed, and the subcategory pages are great for SEO, much better than product pages.

I could link from index.html to "all products in category" and add a navigation column there with links to product subcategories, but then I have a lot of links on that page which dilutes the flow of PR (last time I checked) and complicates the layout and digestibility of the page's content.

How do you guys deal with this sort of usability vs. SEO issue?

[tedster]

As a general rule, I prefer to emphasize usability. More and more, Google is measuring user data and using it in rankings anyway. This means good usability is now a part of SEO - and conventional "SEO" ideas are not really search optimization any longer.

In your case, it sounds like your CMS may have you locked into only a few choices and none of them are really ideal. Having too many links on every page is not a good idea (it's also pretty tough on usability.) Having 2-click access to a product page is pretty common and not really poor usability, IMO.

If you can add some "favorite products" links to the upper level pages, you may have the best of both worlds. I'm pretty sure that ALL your product pages are not converting.

[deadsea]

You take a step back and ask what doesn't make sense. I'd start by asking these questions:

1) Why do users like the "all products" type pages better
2) Do you have duplicate content issues between your "product category" and "all products in category" pages
3) Could you add navigation to your "all products" pages to drill down directly from them, even if that navigation is below the fold.
4) Could you combine the best features of your "category" and "all products" pages and eliminate one or the other?

I'm trying to see if maybe your site structure could be simplified into:

index.html -> all products in category -> all products in subcategory

That would have less duplicate content, less pages that require pagerank, be better for users. The links to the subcategories could even be implemented as javascript powered drop down menus that would still be crawlable by bots, but still would be prominent and useable.

I usually try to satisfy SEO after satisfying the users. Link to what is best for the user, and then try to figure out how to put links on it in an unobtrusive manner so that your site is still crawlable and your important pages get the most pagerank.

Some other things to think about:
Can some of your subcategories link to a set of your best categories, interlinking your site better, rather than just tree structured linking?
Do you have a xml sitemap so that bots know about all your pages even if you don't link there? These days its appears to me that Googlebot apportions internal pagerank through your sitemaps pretty well.

[Tonearm]

In your case, it sounds like your CMS may have you locked into only a few choices and none of them are really ideal.

My site is custom so I'm the only one locking me in. :)

Having 2-click access to a product page is pretty common and not really poor usability, IMO.

It's actually 3 clicks to a product page, 2 clicks to the page that displays links to all products in a category.

1) Why do users like the "all products" type pages better

For one thing, it's only 1 click from an "all products in category" page to a product page instead of 2 clicks from a "product category" page to a product page. Also, subcategory links on a "product category" page look just like product links (ie thumbnail and anchor text) except the anchor text is "Blue Widgets" instead of "Long Tall Blue Widget". In one particular category, there are 2 pages worth of subcategory links and 20 pages worth of product links. When a user clicks on a category from index.html, they see 2 pages of thumbnails instead of 20 pages of thumbnails.

2) Do you have duplicate content issues between your "product category" and "all products in category" pages

No because the "product category" page links only to product subcategories and the "all products in category" page links only to products. There are no duplicate descriptions on these pages.

3) Could you add navigation to your "all products" pages to drill down directly from them, even if that navigation is below the fold.

I'm not sure what you mean here. What sort of links would you add to the "all products in category" page?

4) Could you combine the best features of your "category" and "all products" pages and eliminate one or the other?

That would really be ideal but I'm confronted with 2 issues.

1. too many links
There would be too many links on the "all products in category" pages. There would be links to 30 products plus links to all subcategories in the category which could be as many as 50. My current "product category" pages link to only 30 subcategories (no product links) and paginate the rest which I think is good for SEO.

2. complicated layout
This is the lesser of the two issues, but adding a navigation column for subcategory links to the "all products in category" pages would make the pages a bit more complicated and difficult to digest. If I've learned anything it's that users like it simple.

Could anyone point me (in a PM if necessary) to an ecommerce site that's doing the navigation structure thing right for both SEO and usability?

[netmeg]

This is something I deal with all the time. Like tedster, I really want to come down on the side of users in every instance, even if it means I have to block off or NOINDEX parts of the site for Google. For example, when we moved to Magento, the users were a little confused by the new category structure. The client wanted an all-products-on-page option, so we did that, but we keep it out of Google. Same thing with duplicate subcategories, where it makes sense for an entire subcategory to be available in two top categories (but structure of Magento doesn't allow for doing it the right way) We duplicate it, but we keep one out.

It's a constant struggle, specially when you're working with a package rather than something you wrote yourself. But I really believe in users over Google.

[deadsea]

50 links isn't too many. I regularly work with sites that average 200 links per page. As long as they are well organized, it shouldn't be a problem for users. It certainly isn't a problem for googlebot.

Could you do the navigation as a bar at the top rather than a column? Something with a drop down menu of the subcategories.

As a user, I am usually a big fan of the multi-faceted filters with search for product categories. Those have their own SEO challenges because they can create pages for every combination of filter. Who needs to land on a page of 3 star blue widgets with extra memory slot? At the same time, you might want to make the "widgets with extra memory slot" a crawlable page if people are searching for something like that.

[Tonearm]

50 links isn't too many. I regularly work with sites that average 200 links per page. As long as they are well organized, it shouldn't be a problem for users. It certainly isn't a problem for googlebot.

It's googlebot I'm worried about. My "product category" pages (which are one click down from index.html) currently have only 30 links with each link going to a "product subcategory" page. Those "product subcategory" pages are great for SEO so I like having my "product category" pages (which are 1 click down from index.html) to have only 30 links total, with each link pointing to a "product subcategory" page. If I add 20 more subcategory links (due to the navigation column) and 30 more product links to the current 30 links on the page which is 1 click down from index.html, aren't I diluting the focused PR flow from index.html to my subcategory pages?

I should mention that my Google rankings are stellar, but my site has been online for 10 years so it's hard to say exactly how much is attributable to that as opposed to good internal linking.

Could you do the navigation as a bar at the top rather than a column? Something with a drop down menu of the subcategories.

I may have to give it up, but I'm still holding onto the dream of a website without Javascript. Javascript on other websites drives me crazy almost daily. It even took Google a while to get it right with Gmail. I really appreciate pure HTML/CSS.

As a user, I am usually a big fan of the multi-faceted filters with search for product categories.

I'm waiting for the Kelora thing to die for real before I set that up.

[tedster]

50 links isn't too many. I regularly work with sites that average 200 links per page. As long as they are well organized, it shouldn't be a problem for users. It certainly isn't a problem for googlebot.

Agreed - Google has improved in this area ever since the "reasonable surfer" model of PageRank and link evaluation started to phase in. I still prefer minimizing links, however. It seems unlikely to me that reasonable surfers would distribute their clicks very well over all 200 links on a page.

[Tonearm]

So you guys would get rid of the pages that display subcategories and instead display categories on index.html and products on all of the category pages along with a nav column that links to subcategories? That would be good for SEO?

[deadsea]

It is what I would do. In my experience, too many clicks away from the home page is BAD for SEO. I try to ensure that every product has only a couple clicks from the homepage. Knowing nothing about your site other than what you presented here, it would seem like combing the functionality of some of your pages could get your money pages closer to the homepage and more visible in search engines.

[Tonearm]

Thank you tedster, deadsea, and netmeg for your help with this.