Does on page links have an effect on SERP rankings with PANDA
-
I have been doing some competitive analysis basing my company on others and have noticed a pattern. Very high ranking sites seem to have limited the internal and external on page links on their subdomains to under 100. my site has a lot of links but all are relevant and lead to unique content.
I am interested to know if anyone else has noticed this pattern in changes in the SERP results. bIs google now penalizing pages with to many on site nav links? And if a full site restructure is needed to allow google to index and rank these pages or if a it is a non issue and does not need to be addressed.
Panda confuses me!!!!! HELP!
-
Hi Jake.
Links on a page are what allow page rank to flow throughout your site. The full details are extremely long and complex involving advanced math, technical patents and more fun. If you want to look at some of the details here is a link: http://www.sirgroane.net/google-page-rank/
I should also clarify this issue has no direct relationship to Panda. There can be some indirect relation based on how you present the links, but the number of links on a page is a foundational SEO factor.
At a high level, each link you offer to a page is an indicator of it's importance. If your website has 200 pages and you provide a link to all 200 pages from your home page, you are saying every page of your site has equal importance. This is generally a bad approach and will lead to poor SEO performance.
If you were to offer a "cars" website, there are some makes and models which are very popular, and others which are unpopular. I have not done any research but I imagine cars like Ford Mustangs, Chevy Corvettes and similar flashy models are more popular topics for discussions then a Chrysler Lebaron or other models. From your home page I would suggest a link to each car manufacturer, then a link block of "Popular cars" which links to the mustang and corvette pages. This method allows your PR to flow to your most important pages. It is a solid SEO tactic.
As a general rule, you should minimize your links on a page to what is necessary or helpful. You are damaging your site's SEO by trying to link to everything. It is what I would refer to as "link stuffing". Every additional link you add to a page weakens all the other links on the page.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How does Google rank a "Site:yourexamplesite.com" Query
Hi All, Sorry for the potentially confusing title. I am trying to find out how google ranks the pages of your site when you search "site:yourwebsite.com". When I did this with my website I was surprised what pages showed up on the first page, there were sub-category pages in the top 5 results and top level category pages that weren't on the first page. I have been unable to find information as to how google returns these results, is it the same algorithm/factors that make pages rank highly in a regular search, or does it have something to do with how recently google crawled these pages. Any feedback would be helpful. Additionally, if anyone has worked through a similar scenario I would be interested to know if there were any insights you gained from finding out which of your pages google returned first. Thanks for the help! Jason
Web Design | | Jason-Reid0 -
Ecommerce Category Pages
First, let's define the terminology for the various types of ecommerce pages. The terminology differs from organization to organization: Product Description Pages (PDPs): These pages have a single product, pricing, an "add to cart" button, reviews, and a product description. Product Listing Pages (PLPs): These are product category/subcategory pages that have product image links and text links to Product Description Pages (PDPs). Category Pages: These pages have subcategory image and text links to subcategory pages. No product images are displayed Hybrid Category Pages: these pages combine sub-Category Images and text at the top of the page and product listings below. Our CMS currently does not allow us to create hybrids. This conversation revolves primarily around mobile. Our ecommerce team is having discussions around the appropriate use of PLPs vs Category pages. After doing a quick audit of the mobile sites of some top ecommerce players, there is definitely a trend to use Category Pages at the top of the category and sub-category hierarchy and use PLPs at the very bottom. The logic from a usability perspective is to allow visitors to navigate a site without ever using the hamburger navigation. ex: Baby (Category Page) => Car Seats (Category Page) => Convertible Car Seats (PLP) The sites I audited all had hamburger menus. A visitor would navigate from a home page image for "Baby," an image on the "Baby" page to "Car Seats", and an image on the "Car Seats" page to the Convertible Car Seats page. At that point, they would be able to shop for "Convertible Car Seats" on a PLP. This appears to be excellent UX and easy to use navigation. Theoretically, good for SEO as well. In short, category and subcategory pages are being used as navigation to allow visitors to easily navigate to the bottom of the hierarchy and shop on the most narrow page in the hierarchy. Much easier to use than a hamburger menu, but it does entail more clicks. The discussion revolves around allowing users to shop for product at a higher level in the taxonomy. For example, what if a visitor wants to shop all Car Seats? In the above taxonomy, we are precluding users from shopping in this manner. There is no "Car Seats" PLP. Our CMS has the ability to create both a Category Page and a PLP for "Car Seats". We could theoretically place an image on the "Car Seats" category page for "View All Car Seats", and allow users to click to a "Car Seats" PLP. None of the major ecommerce players I've audited are adding a PLP option higher up in the hierarchy. That doesn't mean that it's not good UX. Problems: From an SEO perspective, having a Category Page and a PLP for "Car Seats" would cause cannibalization - they would be competing for the same keywords. I am skeptical that canonicals would work. The pages are not near duplicate content. One page has category images, the other has product images. We could place content blocks on the page to make them more similar. We could noindex the PLP, but that's a waste of internal link juice. Need advice: Will canonicals work in this situation? Should we trash this idea entirely? Does adding a PLP add value or confusion? Is noindex a good idea? Is there an option to target keyword variations with the PLP? Is there another solution?
Web Design | | Satans_Apprentice0 -
Why is google still crawling my old website pages?
Why is google still looking at my old indexed pages and not my new index. ? Why are they crawling my old website links when none of them are available? How do I overcome these problems?
Web Design | | optimalspaces0 -
What is the Estimated Time for SERP Rankings to Replenish after a Site Redesign?
Hello Fellow Moz'ers, My company's website, www.1099pro.com, is currently OLD and not mobile-friendly! However, we rank #1 for out most important keywords and don't want to lose that ranking. I've recently redesigned our site, currently in testing, to use the same standard desktop pages but to also have responsive, mobile friendly, pages for different view ports. My question is if anyone knows an estimated time frame that search engines (mainly Google) takes to re-crawl the site and restore SERP rankings to their previous levels? The reason is because we are HIGHLY seasonal and if we are not back at our top rankings by early December, at latest (November would be better), then we stand the chance to lose a considerable amount of traffic/revenue. -The Unenlightened One
Web Design | | Stew2220 -
Duplicate items across different pages?
On our new website we have a testimonials page which you can cycle through them. We also have the testimonial on the our work / project page. Essentially this is duplicate content from another page, what's the best thing to do here? In the sake of SEO, remove the duplicate content and only have one? Or won't it make much difference?
Web Design | | vortexuk0 -
Relationship page to target
Hi guys and girls, looking for some help on the topic of links and the options I have before me in the content editor JCE for Joomla. Is this worth setting? Will it help? Please see the screen shot for the options I have and let me know if I should be creating links that are nofollow, help, or any of the other option I have? This is one of the pages I'm looking at for example.. http://www.a1gt.com.au/training-courses/certificate-iii-in-automotive-mechanical-technology In this case the site is linking to a gov training site and I feel the relationship is beneficial and started to wondering if the advanced options have any advantages today? Thank you for your help in advance 🙂 Ben. [
Web Design | | yoonet
](<a href=)" target="_blank">a>
0 -
Too Many On Page Links, rel="nofollow" and rel="external"
Hi, Though similar to other questions on here I haven't found any other examples of sites in the same position as mine. It's an e-commerce site for mobile phones that has product pages for each phone we sell. Each tariff that is available on each phone links through to the checkout/transfer page on the respective mobile phone network. Therefore when the networks offer 62 different tariffs that are available on a single phone that means we automatically start with 62 on page links that helps to quickly tip us over the 100 link threshold. Currently, we mark these up as rel="external" but I'm wondering if there isn't a better way to help the situation and prevent us being penalised for having too many links on page so: Can/should we mark these up as rel="nofollow" instead of, or as well as, rel="external"? Is it inherently a problem from a technical SEO point of view? Does anyone have any similar experiences or examples that might help myself or others? As always, any help or advice would be much appreciated 🙂
Web Design | | Tinhat0 -
Best way to handle related content links in a sidebar?
My site contains tens of thousands of articles, studies, multimedia files, biographies, etc. To assist users with finding content that might be related to the page they're on, I use a side bar with 'also of interest' links to other, similar content on my site. This is, of course, pretty standard practice. Search engines -- Google in particular -- index these pages and then include the text in the sidebar links in search results. So, for example, on a given page I may have 20 links to related content, and the text in those links might be, 'A story about subject ABC.' When I search for 'A story about subject ABC,' Google returns not only the page titled (and containing the content) 'A story about subject ABC.' but also every page that links to it and happens to have that link text in the sidebar. What is the proper way to handle this kind of thing?
Web Design | | smorrison0