What Is Faceted Navigation and Why Does It Matter for Your Website SEO?

Faceted navigation is a helpful feature in website design that makes it easier for users to find what they’re looking for. It lets visitors narrow down their search results by choosing different options.

This method is really useful for online shops, big websites with lots of content, and databases, where users need to quickly and easily search through a lot of items. Faceted navigation helps users easily find what they want by using simple filters like price, brand, size, or color.

This way, they don’t have to scroll or search through too many options. This post looks at the types of faceted navigation and best practices to use them well. It also shows why they are important for making websites easier to use and improving how well they work.

What is Faceted Navigation?

Faceted navigation is a method that helps people narrow down their results while searching based on certain features or qualities. Imagine you want to buy a birthday gift for a friend on Amazon or any other ecommerce site.

Instead of looking through all the product pages one by one, you can use faceted navigation to narrow down the results. This saves you time and helps you find a gift your friend will really like more quickly.

Amazon allows you to sort items in many ways, like by color, price, occasion, expected delivery date, and whether shipping is free or not. Filters are always available no matter what someone looks for on a website, but faceted navigation changes based on the search and the products available.

Imagine you look up “jeans” on Amazon. With faceted navigation, you would see a list of brands like “Jack & Jones,” “Diesel,” and “Calvin Klein”. You wouldn’t find this list if you looked for something else, like “action figures”.

You usually find faceted navigation on online stores, but it also helps you find information on other types of websites. For example, websites for buying houses or finding jobs.

Types of Faceted Navigation

• Hierarchical Faceted Navigation

Hierarchical faceted navigation arranges options in a tree format, where some categories are main ones and others are subcategories. This lets users dig deeper into categories to make their search more specific.

This kind of navigation is especially helpful when there is a clear order among the features. For example, a website that sells clothes might begin with general categories like “Men’s Clothes” and “Women’s Clothes”. These can be divided into smaller sections like “Shirts,” “Pants,” and “Accessories”.

Users can refine their search by choosing specific types, such as “Casual Shirts” or “Formal Pants”. This organized method makes it easier for users to find what they want in a large selection of items, step by step.

It makes sure that searching is easy and makes sense, as users can go from broad topics to specific ones in a straightforward way. It is great for websites with many products or complex information because it helps users browse through choices in an organized way.

• Flat Faceted Navigation

Flat faceted navigation shows all options at the same level. This lets people narrow down their search results using several choices at once, without needing a structured order. This kind of navigation works best when there isn’t a clear order among the attributes, like when you filter by color, size, and brand.

For example, on a website that sells electronics, people might want to choose options for “Brand,” “Price,” “Screen Size,” and “Customer Ratings” at the same time. This lets users choose different options, making it easier to find products that work for many needs.

It can provide a more flexible and complete way to search, but it needs to be designed carefully to avoid confusing users. Good flat faceted navigation should have easy to understand filters that make searching simple and quick.

• Range Faceted Navigation

Range faceted navigation lets users sort search results by a range of numbers, like price, weight, or size. This type of option usually has sliders or boxes where users can set their preferred range.

For example, someone shopping for a laptop online might use a price slider to choose a budget between $500 and $1000. This method gives accuracy and control, allowing users to adjust their search based on what they want and need.

Range facets are especially helpful when numbers are important for making decisions. They help make the search experience more personal, so users can adjust the results to match what they really need.

• Multi-Select Faceted Navigation

Multi-select faceted navigation lets users choose more than one option in a category, making it easier to filter search results. For example, on a fashion shopping website, users may want to pick different colors or brands at the same time to see more product options. 

This is really helpful when users have different preferences and want to look at many choices at the same time. This navigation improves the user experience by making searches more thorough, which means users don’t have to filter results multiple times.

It also makes it easier for users to find products that meet their different needs, which makes them happier and more involved. To make multi-select faceted navigation work well, it needs to have clear visuals and an easy-to-use design.

• Predefined Faceted Navigation

Predefined faceted navigation means creating certain filter options ahead of time based on what users often search for. These ready-made filters help users quickly find popular searches, so they don’t have to choose each option by hand.

For example, an online bookstore might have set categories like “Bestsellers,” “New Releases,” or “Award-Winning Books”. This makes it easier for people to find what they want, especially those who don’t know all the options or who want quick, easy results. 

This makes it easier for users by understanding and meeting their usual needs, leading to a simpler and faster way to find what they’re looking for. It can also show certain products that the business wants to advertise, helping to attract more customers to popular items.

How Faceted Navigation Functions?

It can be simple to set up faceted navigation if you have a basic online store or are using a well-known content management system. Most platforms offer add-ons you can download to enable faceted search.

If your website is complex or has a special content management system, a web developer will need to write code to add the features you want. To use faceted navigation on your website, first add important categories to your products using your website tool.

On most online shopping sites, your filters will show up automatically on the product search page and in your product list. Again, If you’re using a special content management system, you might need a web developer to help you set up faceted navigation.

When a user chooses filters, the website address changes automatically. Your website uses these settings to see what options the visitor is choosing and to find the products in the database that match those choices.

You can use these settings to find out what users search for the most in Google Analytics. It also provides the user with a special link they can use to look at their search again later.

Also Read: Black Friday & Holiday Season SEO Guide 2024 – 10 Essential Tips To Start Preparing

Advantages of Faceted Navigation

• Saves Time

Faceted navigation lets users sort and refine search results by specific things like price, brand, size, or color. This method saves time by getting rid of many useless results and takes users straight to the things they care about.

For example, on an online shopping site, a buyer looking for a blue medium t-shirt can easily find it by using the right filters, avoiding other products that don’t match. This simpler method makes users happier and makes them more likely to buy something.

Faceted navigation helps users find what they’re looking for more easily and quickly. This is good for both users and website owners because it keeps people interested and increases the chances of making sales.

• Better Conversion Rate

Faceted navigation makes using a website easier and helps to increase sales. Faceted navigation helps users find what they want faster by letting them use filters like price, brand, size, and features.

This accuracy helps you find the products you want faster and easier, making your shopping experience better. When users face fewer obstacles and see more relevant results, they are more likely to buy something, which leads to a higher conversion rate. 

Also, it can show similar or matching products, encouraging users to put more items in their cart. Faceted navigation makes it easier to search for products, which helps increase sales. This leads to more money for the business and happier customers.

• Easy Navigation

Faceted navigation helps users quickly find what they want by offering filters and categories like price, brand, color, or size. This makes things easier and happier for users because they can quickly find what they need without having to look through a lot of unrelated results.

For example, a customer on an electronics website can easily sort products by things like screen size, brand, or price. This helps them find what they want faster. This easier process makes it better for users and makes them stay on the site longer and come back more often.

Simple search options make it easier for users to find what they want, which makes them happier and more interested in the website. This helps people feel better about the site, which can lead to them coming back and buying more.

• Supports SEO

Faceted navigation is very important for SEO because it helps to better organize and structure the content on your website. When people use filters to refine their search results, faceted navigation makes special pages that focus on specific features.

These detailed pages give search engines more specific and useful information to look at, which helps them show up in search results for longer, more specific keywords. This detailed way of organizing information helps users find your products or services easily.

Also, good faceted navigation can improve internal linking, making the site structure better and sharing link value more evenly. It helps make your website easier to use and provides helpful content. This can improve how visible your site is in results pages and brings in more people who are looking for specific things.

• Increased User Engagement

Faceted navigation makes it easier for people to find what they need, leading to a better and more engaging experience while they browse. This advanced search method helps users find products by choosing specific features like brand, price, color, or size.

When users can easily find products they like, they are more likely to spend more time looking around the site. This more frequent interaction makes users happier and leads them to search for more product choices and features.

Also, a good faceted navigation system can show related or similar products, which can keep users interested and possibly lead to more sales. Overall, faceted navigation makes it easier and more fun to browse, which helps keep users coming back.

Also Read: SEO Best Practices: How to Rank Higher in Search Engines on Google

Issues Caused by Faceted Navigation

• Duplicate Content

Some pages made through faceted navigation will look quite alike. This can make search engines see these pages as having the same content. Duplicate content isn’t always bad, but it can make it hard for crawler bots to understand.

Because of this, search engines will try to decide which page is most important, and they might pick the one that isn’t as useful. You can use software like Screaming Frog, Google Search Console, and Semrush to find duplicate pages on your website.

If you find any duplicate pages, the fix is to use a method called canonicalization. This is when you use HTML tags to show search engines which page is the main one and should appear in search results. This helps stop duplicate problems and collects all the SEO benefits onto one main page.

• Less Link Equity

Link equity (link juice) is the value a webpage gives to other pages it links to. If you have an important page on your website that has links to other pages, that important page helps those links by giving them a little boost in search engine ranking.

Faceted navigation makes a lot of internal links, which can spread out the value among different pages and reduce its effectiveness.

You can reduce the number of times this happens by being smart about the categories you pick. Pick the most important features for your customers to cut down on unnecessary internal links and focus link strength on key pages.

• Wasted Crawl Budget

Search engines have a limit on how much time and resources they spend to check each website. This limit is called the “crawl budget”. The amount of this budget depends on things like how big the website is, how often it gets updated, and how trustworthy it is.

Faceted navigation creates many pages, which can use up your crawl budget. This means that important pages you want search engines to find might not get crawled. Using multiple features can create more pages, which can use up your crawl budget more quickly.

Smaller websites usually don’t have to think about crawl budget, but websites with over a million unique pages or more than 10,000 pages that change often might have problems with their crawl budget. 

The simplest way to find crawl issues is by using Google Search Console. The page indexing report actually shows you which pages on your site are not being included. It is a summary of which pages on your website are being recognized and listed by Google.

If there are pages you don’t want search engines to display, like a login page or a password-protected page, you can use a noindex tag. This informs search engines not to include it in their listings, allowing them to focus on other pages.

• Complex URLs

Faceted navigation can lead to long and complex web addresses, making it hard for users and search engines to understand. When you use many filters, the web address can get messy with lots of details, making it hard to understand.

These can confuse people, making it harder for them to share or remember certain pages. From an SEO point of view, search engines might have a hard time looking at and organizing these URLs properly, which could mean they miss important information.

Also, they can weaken the value of links because external links might go to different versions of the same page. To fix these problems, create clear and easy-to-read URLs and manage URL details with special tags or by changing the URLs.

• Slow Loading Pages

Having many options and filters for navigation can make your website’s code more complex, which can cause your pages to load more slowly. When users use multiple filters at the same time, the server has to handle more data.

This can use up resources and make pages take longer to load. Pages that load slowly can make users angry, leading them to leave the site for quicker options. This can cause more people to leave your site quickly, which can harm how well your site works.

Also, search engines look at how fast your page loads when deciding where to rank it. If your page takes much time to load, it can hurt your SEO. To solve this problem, it’s important to improve your website’s code, use effective caching methods, and make sure your server can manage the extra traffic from faceted navigation.

Also Read: The Role of Schema Markup in SEO: Enhancing Your Website’s Visibility in Search Results

Best Practices to Use Faceted Navigation

• Add Directives to Robots.txt

A good way to manage faceted navigation is to use the robots.txt file to tell search engines how to index your site. It can create many different web addresses, which may cause problems with duplicate content and make it harder for search engines to explore the site.

You can tell search engines not to look at certain URLs created by filtering options by adding rules to your robots. txt file This helps stop duplicate content from being listed and saves your website’s crawl budget.

For instance, you might block web addresses that have certain words like “sort” or “filter” so that search engines pay more attention to your main content.

Taking care of these guidelines can help your website’s SEO by making sure search engines notice the most important and special pages. This can improve how visible and highly ranked your site is, while also keeping your site organized and efficient.

• Display the Number of Results for Each Facet

Showing how many results there are for each option helps users navigate better and makes their experience more enjoyable. When users see how many items are available next to each filter option, they can choose better which filters to use.

For example, if someone is looking for shoes and sees that there are 50 options in the “red” filter but only 5 in the “blue” filter, they can easily see how many choices they have. This clear information helps users not to get stuck when using a filter that might not show any results.

Also, this can make users want to look at more categories because they can quickly see how many choices they have. Adding this feature helps make it easier for users to find their way around and boosts the chances that they will find and buy the products they want.

• Optimize for Both Desktop and Smart Devices

It’s important to make sure that faceted navigation works well on both desktop systems and smart devices to give users a smooth experience on all platforms. As more people use their phones to shop and browse online, it’s important to create navigation that works well on different orientations and screen sizes.

On computers, filters can be shown clearly on the side or top of the page, making it easy for people to narrow down their search results. For mobile devices, the navigation should adjust well, with filters that can be opened with easy-to-tap menus or icons.

Making sure that interfaces are easy to use with touch screens and reducing the amount of scrolling needed makes them more user-friendly. This method improves the browsing experience and helps get more people to interact and make purchases on all devices.

• Organize Facet Values Logically

Organizing the facet values logically is important for making it easy and smooth for users when they use faceted navigation. A good organization helps users quickly find and pick the filters that matter most to their search.

This means putting similar features together and organizing them based on what users usually like and do. For instance, on an online shopping site, size options might go from smallest to biggest, and price options might go from cheapest to most expensive.

Also, commonly used filters should be easy to find for quick access. By doing this, you help users find what they are looking for more easily. This makes it quicker for them to narrow down their search and increases the chance they’ll find the products they want.

• Use AJAX

Using AJAX, a method for updating web pages, in faceted navigation can make it easier and faster for users to see new search results without needing to reload the whole page. When users use filters, AJAX quickly changes the content on the page, making the experience smoother and faster.

Also, using AJAX reduces the amount of work for the server and saves bandwidth because it only sends the data that is needed instead of loading the whole page again. This makes the website run better, and lowers the number of people who leave the site quickly.

Using AJAX with faceted navigation makes searching easier and smoother. This helps users look around more and chances of them making a purchase go up. This results in a faster and more engaging browsing experience.

• Use Clear Labels

Using clear and consistent labels is very important for a good navigation system with different options. Each filter or option should have easy-to-understand labels so users know what they mean, without using complex words or unclear phrases.

Using the same labels helps users easily find and use the right filters on different pages of your website. For example, if you call a filter “Price Range” on one page, don’t use a different name like “Cost” on another page.

Clear labels make it easier for everyone, including people with disabilities, to use your site. When you make your labels clear and consistent, it helps users find what they need more quickly, which makes them more engaged and happy.

• Add Breadcrumb Navigation

Breadcrumb navigation is an important tool that helps users see the steps they’ve taken while exploring different options. This tool shows you a clear path of the filters you’ve used and the steps you’ve taken, making it easy for you to go back or change your selections. 

For example, if a user chooses products like “Electronics > Laptops > Under $1000,” the breadcrumb navigation will show this choice. This makes it easy to change or remove any of these filters.

Using breadcrumbs makes it easier to navigate through different filter options by simplifying how you move through the various levels. Also, breadcrumbs help improve SEO by making a clear linking system that search engines can easily understand.

• Prioritize Important Filters

Putting important filters first is a good practice that helps users find the most useful options quickly. Important filters should be easy to see and use so that users can quickly find and use them without wasting time.

For instance, an online shopping website might place options like “Price,” “Brand,” and “Customer Ratings” at the top of the filter section because shoppers often use these to help them make decisions.

Also, focusing on important filters can lead to more sales since users can easily and quickly find products that fit what they want. By concentrating on the filters that make the biggest difference, you make your navigation system work better.

• Add Facet Descriptions

Using clear descriptions for each facet helps make your navigation system easier to understand and use. Short descriptions for each filter help users know what each one does and how it will change the search results.

For example, a section called “Material” might explain that you can choose products based on the type of material they are made from, like cotton, polyester, or wool. This helps users understand how to use the filters, making it easier for them to decide what to choose.

Facet descriptions are helpful for complicated filters that some users might find hard to understand. Also, good facet descriptions can help improve SEO by giving bots more information about your website’s content.

• Make Resetting Easy

Making it easy to reset filters is an important part of good faceted navigation. It lets users quickly remove all the filters they’ve set and start over. A simple “reset” or “clear all” button lets users remove all their choices with just one click.

This feature is really helpful for users who have used several filters and want to try different combinations without having to remove each one manually. By providing a simple way to reset, you make things less frustrating and improve the user experience.

It also helps users try out different filters, knowing they can easily go back to the original results if they want. Also, a good reset button keeps search results tidy and organized, stopping things from getting messy and confusing.

Wrapping Up

Faceted navigation is an important tool for websites with a lot of content. It helps users easily sort and find what they’re looking for. It helps users have a better experience by offering simple and useful filters, making it easy for them to find what they need quickly. 

Using good methods like clear labels, a logical layout, and adaptable design makes faceted navigation easier to use. This helps people engage more and increases the chances of making a purchase.

Also, fixing problems like duplicate content and slow website loading can help make it more useful. It is an important tool that, when used properly, greatly improves how a website works and how happy users are with it. This makes it essential for online websites.

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