Flow of internal link equity
-
I've recently come across this:
A site changes the URL of one internal page to something more search friendly, and 301's the old to the new as you would expect.
They don't change the link on the homepage in the navigation. Instead they keep it to the old URL so they go through the 301 to get to the page even though it's internal.
They say if they change the URL it will reset the internal flow of link equity to that page.
I've not come across this before and so am not sure what to think. I mean I can see what they're saying but I would have though that it being internal would mean it's different and that the flow to internal pages would just kind of resume as-was quite soon afterwards.
Any views?
-
Steve... "P" for Pope too!
-
Hehe I felt the need to go check out the pope's new site from that, nice amount of links as one would expect but some awful on-site... the whole thing is an image, and then tables instead of CSS on other pages... and no analytics
-
...and refuse to give it upper-case on principle
Bad attitude... you will never get a link from the Pope's new site until you start using "G".
-
"Ask them if they ever hunt rabbits.
Then ask if they try to kill them by shooting straight at them or if they try to hit them with a ricochet. :-)"
EGOL, it may get me into trouble but I swear to god I am actually going to do that... I'm going to ask them that exactly how you've said it because I just won't be able to resist it now lol.
Thanks... for the burst of laughter and for the answer I needed!
P.S. All Viewers: Before anybody points it out, I know god is meant to have a capital G but I'm an anti-theist and refuse to give it upper-case on principle (I get corrected on that purposeful typo a lot so thought I'd nip it in the bud this time).
-
They don't change the link on the homepage in the navigation. Instead they keep it to the old URL so they go through the 301 to get to the page even though it's internal.
Ask them if they ever hunt rabbits.
Then ask if they try to kill them by shooting straight at them or if they try to hit them with a ricochet.
They say if they change the URL it will reset the internal flow of link equity to that page.
If you have trouble extracting them from this thinking then I don't think that they are ready for your services. You will be pulling teeth through every step of the job.
-
Yeah that's pretty much what I was thinking but then could they be right? I mean there doesn't seem to be any data anywhere to show if it does have an affect on the linked-to page (however minimal). Somebody somewhere must have tested it.
It does make sense to keep it seen as a moved page and not a new one to keep whatever trust it's built up but surely as an internal page, any new page that replaces it wouldn't take long to pull that same trust back in anyway (this is based on the fact that it's not exactly got a lot of equity anyway).
-
Yep, that sounds like a load of old cobblers to me. Surely, you change a page, you update your navigation?
"reset the internal flow of link equity?" - really? So, are they implying that if they link to the new page in the navigation, it will somehow affect the ranking of said page. But if they use the 301 it will be fine?
Sounds like someone not really getting what is going on here behind the scenes. I can only imagine that they want googlebot to crawl that link to realise the page name has been updated and have somehow extrapolated this from that train of thought with the intention of making sure it is seen as a moved page rather than a new one.
Marcus
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
-
If I use links intag instead of "ahref" tag can Google read links inside div tag?
Hi All, Need a suggestion on it. For buttons, I am using links in tag instead of "ahref". Do you know that can Google read links inside "div" tag? Does it pass rank juice? It will be great if you can provide any reference if possible.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pujan.bikroy0 -
Whats the best practice for internal links?
Hi our site is set up typically for a key product (money page) with 6 to 12 cluster pages, with a few more associated blog pages. If for example the key product was "funeral plans" what percentage of the internal anchor text links should be an exact match? Will the prominence of those links eg higher up the page have an impact on the amount of juice flowing? And do links in buttons count in the same way as on page anchor text eg "compare funeral plans"? Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AshShep1
Ash1 -
Do internal links from non-indexed pages matter?
Hi everybody! Here's my question. After a site migration, a client has seen a big drop in rankings. We're trying to narrow down the issue. It seems that they have lost around 15,000 links following the switch, but these came from pages that were blocked in the robots.txt file. I was wondering if there was any research that has been done on the impact of internal links from no-indexed pages. Would be great to hear your thoughts! Sam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Will an inbound follow link on a site be devalued by an inbound affiliate link on the same site?
Hey guys, quick question I didn't find an answer to online. Scenario: 1. Site A links to Site B. It's a natural, regular, follow-link 2. Site A joins Site B's affiliate program, and adds an affiliate link Question: Does the first, regular follow link get devalued by the second affiliate link? Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ipancake0 -
Not sure if I should disavow these links or not
I am on the marketing team for CandyGalaxy.com we are an online candy store that specializes in bulk candy for events. Were just about a year and a half old and i'm running into some SEO strategy road blocks lately. When we started the company we used an oversee's seo company. For the first few months results were great then things took a massive dive as google began rolling out updates early and mid last year. After that point we started taking things in house and have been trying to create content and begin content marketing. We launched a blog @ blog.candygalaxy.com and also launched and educational resource at candybuffet101.com - However the question i'm up against now is what to do with those bad old links? Are they actually hurting us? Or just neutral? I'm also trying to decided what to do about the links in my footer? We put those there because those are truly our most popular products and we wanted customers to have easy access, but are those links potentially harmful? I'm questioning these issues because I feel like there is something holding back some of my pages from ranking. For example "blue candy" is a very popular section of our website. We have worked on a lot of content for the blog related to blue candy, made videos, photo shoots ect. We have customer reviews on page and unique category content. According to open site explorer our DA and PA are around the range of most of the sites in the 8-12 serp position. But we have more social activity then all but the top 2-3 spots. However the page almost impossible to find via search. Its not in the first 300 results and surely the page is more relevant then an entry about quilts.. Similar situations like this have led me to think that maybe there is a technical underlying issues that I have not addressed. ? The content is definitely there because if i type in a line from the content directly to google it is the first result. So the site seems indexed properly.. Would love to hear any feedback from similar experiences or ideas. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jonathan_Murrell0 -
Anchor text diversity for internal links?
Should I be worried about anchor text diversity for my internal links? It seems like I should be ok but I just wanted to double check... you know how google can be
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KenyonManu3-SEOSEM0 -
Duplicate internal links on page, any benefit to nofollow
Link spam is naturally a hot topic amongst SEO's, particularly post Penguin. While digging around forums etc, I watched a video blog from Matt Cutts posted a while ago that suggests that Google only pays attention to the first instance of a link on the page As most websites will have multiple instances of a links (header, footer and body text), is it beneficial to nofollow the additional instances of the link? Also as the first instance of a link will in most cases be within the header nav, does that then make the content link text critical or can good on page optimisation be pulled from the title attribute? I would appreciate the experiences and thoughts Mozzers thoughts on this thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JustinTaylor880 -
How to ping the links
When i do link building for my website, how can i let the search engines know about that. is there any way of pinging?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | raybiswa0