We all have encountered faceted navigation while visiting websites, especially for a site with a considerable number of listings. Therefore, knowing about faceted navigation, how it works, SEO aspects, and much more. Usually, when a site has a large amount of data that is grouped in diverse ways, IA designing can be challenging. Usually, e-commerce sites have to go through this.
However, to make things flexible and easy to navigate, faceted navigation is a valuable solution. We have witnessed its examples many times while browsing through Amazon or eBay.
Let’s dig deeper into it:
What Is Faceted Navigation?
Faceted navigation is a panel on a website’s sidebar that helps people navigate through the site. It is a UX pattern that aids in finding specific categories or archives pages by allowing filter-based features of the listings. We all witness it on large websites with vast amounts of data on items. It is used commonly to speed up the time for visitors to find things with minimum hassle.
Commonly, we refer to the navigation as a ‘filter search’ or sometimes it is ‘filters.’
Examples of the Faceted Navigation
Catalogues of Books Library: It sorts books by genre, publication year, author name
Real Estate Websites: It helps to filter out properties with location, price, amenities, etc.
E-Commerce Sites: It helps to filter out based on colour size, type, price, etc.
Online Directories: You can filter out jobs, course listings, etc., based on duration type, experience
Travel Website: Find the data refined according to your stay dates, available airlines, hotels, etc.
How Does Faceted Navigation Work?
AS given the examples above, it is already clear that filtering the listings is the basic work of faceted navigation. The filters can be used for jobs, products, flights, colour, brand, weight, salary, and quantity.
When the user clicks on these filters, generally, four things happen at the back end.
- A listing update instantly without page reload (typically by a Java Script)
- The page might reload, and the user can see the results (JavaScript is usually not used in this case)
- Sometimes, users have to choose the filter options and click on buttons like next or apply to update the listing and see the refined choices.
- Lastly, by clicking on the filters, the user is redirected to the next page.
In all these scenarios, the first two are built on the same UX, but the third one is different.
When the user clicks to apply the filters, a new page loads.
The first two options have a similar UX but a different UX pattern to option three.
Once the selected filters are applied, the URL usually updates the selection to reflect the results. Depending on the choice and use of JavaScript, things act differently for URLs. For instance
- The URL stays the same, and the listing is updated.
- The site parameters change the URL a little, like ‘?colour=silver & brand=iphone.’
- The URL is changed, and the site appends a hash with it like #colour=green
- An entirely new static site URL is created like /heels/red/ (here, the user is using the ‘red’ colour facet)
Best Practices For Using Faceted Navigation:
When implementing faceted navigation. There are a few things one should consider to get the best of it.
Know the Target Options:
Understand what users find the most on your site. It will help you add the best filter options. Online surveys can be used for the best results.
Choose the Correct Option:
Users have their unique way of choosing any item. For instance, a press looking for a dress might filter colour type, material and size. Likewise, the person looking to buy a mobile phone will use filters like brand, price, colour, etc.
Use Familiar Terms for Navigation:
All the hassle is about easy navigation. Therefore, use easy-to-understand terms and link them with the items users are looking for.
Flexibility:
A user can avail themselves of the flexibility to choose more than one filter at a time. For instance, the user should be able to choose between colour, size and style.
How Faceted Navigation Impacts SEO:
Filter options or faceted navigation are user-friendly, but they can negatively or positively impact your SEO efforts. Here is how:
Issue of Duplicate Content:
Duplicate content means ranking becomes more challenging. When filters are applied, a new URL is automatically created even though the content stays the same. It causes the duplicate content issue as many pages are serving the same thing.
Weak Link Equity:
Weak link equity is also one of the outcomes of flyers. This is because internal links are re-spread across numerous URLs. There is more than one page to link, and it can delay the indexing and ranking of the main page.
Waste of Crawling Budget:
A massive budget will be well spent on crawling duplicate pages and crawling your valuable pages.
Tips To Fix Faceted Navigation SEO Issues:
A few of the tips to fix faceted navigation SEO issues are:
- Fix indexing with canonical tags
- Fix problems crawling with robots.txt
- Use no-follow links
- Fix the indexing issue with the no-index tag
Conclusion:
Faceted navigation is no doubt an excellent method to make a website user-friendly. To use the best of these navigations, consider user intent and try to use the easy terms for best results. Likewise, the flexibility to choose from more than one option also adds to its benefits.
Sometimes, faceted navigation can hinder SEO efforts by creating duplicate content, diluting link equity, and wasting the crawl budget. However, the shortcomings can be dealt with by using no-follow links and canonical tags.