Prevent main menu in shop to negatively affect internal link juice

Question

When analyzing our shop system, all SEO tools complain unanimously that there are too many internal links. We have a main menu bar integrated into all shop pages, containing links to our about 900 categories and subcategories in a tree-like view.

Now, adding resonable text to the categories and linking to it's subcategories seems like a waste, as it is only one link in about a thousand, making the process a bit ridiculous.

Is there a way to tell search engines something like "This is only a menu, don't listen to all the links it contains" via HTML? We'd like to keep the menu as a navigation option for users used to it and not remove it just because the SEO analytics complain about it - usability over SEO, if you will.

How is this solved in general, without compromising the navigation option?

Answer 1

• Firstly you should answer the question: which kinds of pages should rank? categories, sub-categories, product detail pages?
• Then change all unnecessary links (links from important to not important pages and links from not important to not important pages) from a href (GET) to button (POST)
• Then set all unnecessary pages to noindex

On this way you minimize the amount of pages and links only to those, which are important, should rank and transfer link juice.