Huge Mistake?

I’m not doing that well is search engines and i’m trying to figure it out what could be the problem.
I just found something interesting which can be one of thousands of problem what makes my site not rank.
When i run a check(text-only version) on my website i see the main navigation menu appear twice.

Menu1
Menu2
Menu3
Menu4

Logo

Menu1
Menu2
Menu3
Menu4

Which is just Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? Why your theme doing this?
You can check it by yourself on any website indexed by google.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?strip=1&q=cache:anywebsite-url-or-page-url

• This topic was modified 11 years by kacsa1337.

Even I saw this today. You can just view the source of any website and observe that the menu and header details are repeated twice.

You can see this even on your website. I think most search engines might think it as a duplicate content with keyword stuffing and might penalize!

Any inputs from experts is much appreciated.

I would love to have a temporary fix for this solution and will be happy to receive additional inputs.

Before i created this thread i was triple checking that other(wordpress!) responsive website do this or just mine but seems like its only Newspaper.

Emil G. you are right, there is two menu item in the source code one for desktop and one for mobile and tablet. The main problem other responsive website don’t show the menu twice. That’s why i don’t understand whyyyy Newspaper do this?

The tool i used to check this can be found in my very first post:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?strip=1&q=cache:anywebsite-url-or-page-url

Or if you want a tool check it with Lynx web broweser

samratreddy: Algorithm which decide our rank in google, and if this is how google see our site i think it has negative impact.
If google see the same url linked twice in one page. Google gonna follow the first and ignore the second link, but at the end your onpage seo score gonna be lower.
Im sure google wont penalize you just because of this, but it can be an extra factor which makes your not rank.

Having two sets of links to same items, does not impact search rank when they are internal vs external links. Many sites the past 20 years have had top menu links, then bottom of page or sidebar links to things, and this does not hurt “page rank.”

For example, having an “about us” link in the top bar, or link to “services” then a link at bottom of page to “services” doesn’t adversely hurt your ranking. Internal links are only counted once per page, regardless of how many links there are for any “juice.”

Think of a service page where you have a main navigation with links to your service offerings, then links in the middle for more info, links at bottom of page as roundup of site links. Obviously, Google won’t penalize you for linking to your own offerings for information and services, and/or articles.

This is similar to having a page with current news, and a “most popular” box on the sidebar; those links to the most popular stories don’t kill the value of that content in search.

Just some input on this topic. 🙂

I may not be 100% correct but here are my thoughts.

I basically have around 8 categories each with around 5 sub-categories on the home page menu which adds up to 40 links. And with this duplication there will be additional 40 links from my home page. I think this will definitely be going to effect the home page link juice and thus the SERP’s.

Well, not in my experience with magazine sites the past 20 years, and owner of an SEO firm. If that were the case then CNN, LA Times, NY Times, BBC, etc., would not have duplicate links on their sites.

It’s primarily EXTERNAL links which you might be penalized for or “masked links” to the same pages, or DUPLICATE CONTENT – not duplicate links, and “spammy” links on words/phrases to a page.

For example “best cereal in town,” “world’s best breakfast cereal” as links and additional to a page would be bad for SERPS. Simply linking to “about us” three times on one page will not hurt your ranking, as how else would visitors find that content? If you have 40 pages, you might have 40 links in menu bar and again at bottom of page.

Remember the page being linked to should only exist ONCE, and that page should be the canonical link for that content. Linking to it three or four times from one page will not hurt your rankings.

Of course, you can simply test this, by doing an A/B split test, which is how people actually verify the concern, vs. speculation.

Back in 2009, 100 links per page was recommended limit; but that has since changed due to the fact Google’s bots are more sophisticated, and now use your XML sitemap quite extensively for spidering vs having to manually follow all your links from pages.

If Google divides the juice by the number of links, and you had 100 links, and 3 links to same page from home, then arguably that would be 3% of the juice, or perhaps only 1% for being the same link, or the it would be averaged to 30 links x 3 times each, might be 3.5% per link. But it doesn’t really work that way.

Main focus is great original content for the PAGE being linked to. That is the most important element for SERPS, not how many internal links point to a specific page.

But, your mileage may vary.

My experience is that you wont be penalized by google just because you did ONE thing wrong.
If google filter find many problems on your site, that’s when we can talk about algo/manual penalty.

@Christopher Simmons, thanks for making a few things clear, but:
You are right having nav. menu twice is not a problem because many sites do it, but in this case the same nav. menu repeat itself again in the HEADER section which is nonsense.
Also this menu is hidden for your visitors so there is absolute no reason having them.
So my question is: Whats the purpose having an extra(in @samratreddy case) 40 link to the same section of your website which is hidden(lol)?

Well, something which is hidden based on the viewport shouldn’t be seen when Google spiders a page looking at the “desktop” version if the second menu isn’t active. If both menus are visible on the page then both versions being followed would be an issue; a menu intended for different viewport but not visible on desktop, would not be followed by the desktop spider as it’s not part of the active DOM.

I may be thinking of how v 4.2.2 menus work, not 4.3, so pardon me if I’m entirely missing the point on the concern 😉

Having a mobile menu, and then a completely different desktop menu, is about the only way you can have a mega menu and a slide out mobile menu on same page and also have that switch on a tablet by changing orientation which doesn’t reload the page.