: Do I need an umbrella services page to match the /services/ part of our URLs? From a usability perspective, this is not necessary. The mega menu dropdown on all pages makes it extremely clear
From a usability perspective, this is not necessary. The mega menu dropdown on all pages makes it extremely clear how to navigate to the relevant services we offer.
However, I am wondering whether a lack of a example.com/services/ page would confuse search engines, who otherwise will see example.com/services/exampleservice etc. for each of the service pages.
My thinking is they should be intelligent enough to know what's going on, but don't want to significantly harm our SEO if for some reason they really need to see a page for every URL slug element!
UPDATE: We do actually have a /services/ page, but it is not linked to anywhere and has no content on it. I suppose you need one if it has its own folder?
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Short Answer: Yes, you need an umbrella page.
Long Answer: I agree with the comments and answers already supplied so let me try to expand upon them.
What @closetnoc is referring to is (depending on server configuration) that the URL
example.com/ by default displays example.com/index.html
and
example.com/services/ displays example.com/services/index.html
So it's always a best practice to ensure that requests to any directory render a page.
UX/UI research has shown that when a drop down menu (context menu) opens on hover or click, most users won't click the parent item (they assume the sub-options are their only choices)...but some users will.
Omitting this page or leaving it blank is a wasted opportunity. Some users will (try to) visit it via navigation; some users, like me, will (try to) visit it if the deeper pages doesn't satisfy what they are looking for.
But more importantly, for users and search engines, this is an opportunity to create a page of content with contextual, keyword rich links to the services pages of your site.
While every link, on every page, of your mega menu might contain a link to Sexy Service Foo on this page you can add a contextual link to Learn More About Foo-ing Your Bar.
A specific, contextual link like that might be worth more to your SEO than the links to that page that you have in your menu sitewide.
As a rule of thumb you should not have any blank pages that can be accessed online. If the /services/ page it not linked to in anyway then there should be no chance of a crawler going through it as crawling is based on links and sitemaps. There is no real need to have a /services/ page if all links lead to service specific pages, but as @closetnoc suggests take advantage of the additional marketing potential by having that page link to all your service details pages and providing a brief view of those services. You can also do cross selling in the /services/ page buy grouping similar or complimentary services together as a way to encourage a potential customer to purchase a group of services from you where in the current setup they may just purchase one service from you.
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