SEO Tycoon

**3angle** · 10-08-2007, 07:00 AM

Hi,

I am a new registrant but a long time viewer of these boards.

I run http://www.gamemobile.co.uk a mobile games site which has a great deal of traffic but have recently run into a conundrum.

There are currently about 8-900 supported mobile phones on our site and until recently we have had a main menu linking to all these 'phone home pages' for each model - see an example at http://www.gamemobile.co.uk/mobile-tv.php

You 'll note the menu is very large! I used to have this menu on all the games pages (the individual products) but it got so large that it was seriously affecting page loading. So, what I did was replace it with a link to 'choose your manufacturer' see http://www.gamemobile.co.uk/tetriss65.htm as an example.

My main question is that now the large menu is off the site, linking to all the pages, how much will this hurt us in google compared to not having it? Is it safe to remove it? We've even had to take it off the home page!

I would very much appreciate anyone's help on this.

Thanks in advance.
Richard

**gringo** · 10-08-2007, 07:23 AM

Bad bad bad. You've replaced links that the search engines can follow with links they can't follow. A search engine doesn't have little fingers with which to select a brand in your form.

The dropdown list in your <select> contains the same items that are in the list on your original menu system - why not just have them as links pointing to the page that has all phones by that brand?

**3angle** · 10-08-2007, 07:40 AM

Hi, it was maybe what I was thinking.

How about this http://www.gamemobile.co.uk/index.htm now?

Thanks for your help.

**3angle** · 10-08-2007, 07:41 AM

I guess my main thought was that now we don't have a menu pointing to all the individual pages and now links which point to another sub-page before the main content page, would this hurt us in Google?

**gringo** · 10-08-2007, 08:00 AM

I'd prefer to keep the pages only one click away from the home page.

I know this might mean a bit of redesign/CSS trickery but could you have the menu stretching from left to right nearer the top of the screen so that you have more room for the dropdown menu?

**3angle** · 10-08-2007, 08:06 AM

Hi,

Yes, it's not a problem about where the menu goes, that's easy enough, it's that there are now way too many links for the menu system (and many browsers) to handle - for example it is taking up to 18 seconds to process and display the menu in some popular browsers and the page is unusable during this time which of course is a massive usability no no.
Therefore, I've had to try and think of the best compromise without publishing all the links in the menu system.

Thanks again for any suggestions.