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XinRu657

: Bad to add external link in the navbar? Is it considered a bad practice to have external links in the navbar of a website? In my case, I am thinking of selling some of my items on a

@XinRu657

Posted in: #Links #Navigation #Seo #Usability

Is it considered a bad practice to have external links in the navbar of a website?

In my case, I am thinking of selling some of my items on a new website that I previously sold on my current website. Could I change the links to those items so that they point to the external site or would that be considered a bad practice for SEO and UI/UX purposes?

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@Si4351233

From an SEO point of view it won't make a difference unless the link is classed as link spamming, in other words the page you are linking to does not have anything to do with the current page (or the product you are linking to does not have anything to do with the page).

From a UX/UI perspective it is not ideal as a navigation bar should be used for navigating the various sections of your site. It makes sense to use the navigation bar to link to sister sites or to link to other sites that relate to your own site or even a product if the product relates to your site but only if there is a clear relationship and purpose for the link. If the purpose of the link is to advertise a product which the user may find useful or interesting this would be better suited to a sidebar module (such as a recommended links block).

At the end of the day where you place the links in your site is up to you. A good rule of thumb is to say "would I like to see this done on another site"

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@Correia994

A terrible idea.
Unless the URL is rel="nofollow" and has a really important reason to be in your top of page navigation.

Follow up: Part of ranking is the choice of quality/authority OUTBOUND links. If the outbound link is RELEVANT to the page context then it should be a "follow" link but in my view not placed in the top nav area.

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@Margaret670

Not at all. StackExchange does it. Google doesn't care if you link to sister sites, as long as you're not committing link spam.

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@Turnbaugh106

i don't think it's a good practice to put external links in main NavBar. As you said you want to sell some of items on a new website that you previously sold on current website, so its better to use 301 redirection on current website relevant URLs to new website.

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@Kristi941

I don't think it is a bad practice.

Big blogs like lifehacker.com also have added external links in the navbar(their main traffic source is organic traffic).

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