Side Nav. Vs. Top Nav

[hwade]

I have  a client that currently has a side navigation and wants to know how changing to a top nav will affect her SEO. We always recommend top nav for user experience but I am not sure if there is a direct effect on SEO. Would the change affect it? Thoughts?

[EGOL]

I would.... put the links in the top nav and place adsense at the top position of the left nav.

[ChadBreezy]

Yea just think above the fold for your nav and links.

You can always design-silo the website to direct your users throughout your site.

This will help keep your home page in a healthy range for the number of links and you're most important ones at the top!

Using fresh h3 tags on other pages throughout your website with simple links will help a ton!

[josh-riley]

Great points; we have top nav and it's never proved to be an issue. I'm working on a project where we've migrating from left to top nav and I anticipate issues because its a change for the user experience and we've already trained them on a different nav.

[irvingw]

if the linking is exactly the same it should have no effect on SEO, but could have a neg or positive effect on bounce rate and other user experience stats.

you could always safely a/b test it

[ChadBreezy]

Having your most important links in a top nav is great for crawlability and significance to Google about what directories or pages are of importance. Removing the nav is okay unless you can ensure keeping sitelinks from the home page of importance above the fold.

I professionally would avoid removing your top nav and maybe focus more on the mechanics of css/javascript-jquery to deliver better appeal to users for click-throughs and conversions