Can I reduce link count by no following links?
-
Hi,
A large number of my pages contain over 100 links. This is due to a large drop down navigation which is on every page. To reduce my link count could I just no follow these navigation links or would I have to remove the navigation completely?
-
How is the large drop-down menu working for your site's visitors? Is there scope to improve the navigation and reduce the number of links?
If the navigation is important then you can't just remove it completely can you? I would take a look at how the site is being used and how well the navigation is helping visitors find what they're looking for. What's the reason this navigation exists? Can you use the current page to provide context and reduce the number of relevant links?
Once you know how important it is you'll be in a much better position to decide whether to remove it (or improve it) or not.
-
To my current knowledge Google treats internal nofollow links as followed for linkjuice purposes. Beeing a bit over 100 links is not too much of a problem. You might want to consider to consolidate a few pages into one. Another solution could be to noindex really unimportant pages (legal/disclaimer etc.)
I have a question myself: does Google crawl pages that are internally nofollowed?
-
Christopher is correct; the link juice is divided between all the links on the page whether the links have the nofollow attribute is lost. So, the suggestion that you can tell Google where to send the link juice (called PageRank sculpting) is erroneous.
You can block those pages from being crawled and indexed via your robots text, but again, it will not mean more link juice is passed to the crawled pages.
The concept of "too many links" was fostered by A Google Webmaster Guideline of some years ago that advised against more than 100 links on a page. Google warned that not all links were likely to be crawled if there were so many.
Google now says that is no longer an issue. However, that many links on a page can present an issue with usability for your site visitors and that should be your guiding light on the number of links per page.
-
It is my understanding, bases on other responses to this forum, that using nofollow does not improve the link juice passed to the follow links, but that the link juice that would have been passed to the nofollow link is lost.
Best,
Christopher -
I do not Think that it would reduce the number of links. However it would improve the link juice passed by the links that ARE followed. It is my impression that Google does not punish you for a large menu (if it is not extreme). Can you give a link where i can see the menu? What you really need to do is decide if the dropdown is necessary? If the links are truly usable for your users they are likely to be good for Google. Try and use google analytics to see if users actually use the navigation?
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 can I stop a tracking link from being indexed while still passing link equity?
I have a marketing campaign landing page and it uses a tracking URL to track clicks. The tracking links look something like this: http://this-is-the-origin-url.com/clkn/http/destination-url.com/ The problem is that Google is indexing these links as pages in the SERPs. Of course when they get indexed and then clicked, they show a 400 error because the /clkn/ link doesn't represent an actual page with content on it. The tracking link is set up to instantly 301 redirect to http://destination-url.com. Right now my dev team has blocked these links from crawlers by adding Disallow: /clkn/ in the robots.txt file, however, this blocks the flow of link equity to the destination page. How can I stop these links from being indexed without blocking the flow of link equity to the destination URL?
Technical SEO | | UnbounceVan0 -
Paid Links - How does Google classify them?
Greetings All, I have a question regarding "Paid Links." My company creates custom websites for other small businesses across the country. We always have backlinks to our primary website from our "Dealer Sites." Would Google and other search engines consider links from our "dealer sites" to be "paid links?" Example:
Technical SEO | | CFSSEO
http://www.atlanticautoinc.com/ is the "dealer site." Would Google consider the links from Atlantic Auto to be a "paid link," and therefor have less of an impact for page rankings, due to it not being organic? Any insight on this matter would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!!!0 -
How do you perform your link audits?
What methods and tools do you guys use to perform link audits? Do you also use a traffic light system for links?
Technical SEO | | PurpleGriffon0 -
Explain me the SEO impact when a website has more internal link compared to less internal links
A website that I am working on has more than 200 internal links (Its because of the design and various kind of service that we offer). I want to know its SEO impact. I also want to know the SEO impact when a website has less internal links compared to more internal links
Technical SEO | | BoniSatani0 -
Internal Links
In OSE, it is reporting that i don't have any internal links to my homepage. In the header on every page is my logo in the top left hand corner which links back to my homepage. Shouldn't this mean then that every page should link to the home page? Similarly, internal pages which link from my main nav aren't showing up as having any internal links in OSE. Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | Santaur0 -
Too Many On-Page Links?
How much would this affect my page ranks performance? There are many Too Many On-Page Links? warning on my campaign. should I address this issue right away to fix it or leave it as it would not matter seriously ? I've looked at some of the pages and think all of them are necessary. Could someone help me? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | LauraHT0 -
Can name="author" register as a link?
Hi all, We're seeing a very strange result in Google Webmaster tools. In "Links to your site", there is a site which we had nothing to do with (i.e. we didn't design or build it) showing over 1600 links to our site! I've checked the site several times now, and the only reference to us is in the rel="author" tag. Clearly the agency that did their design / SEO have nicked our meta, forgetting to delete or change the author tag!! There are literally no other references to us on this site, there hasn't every been (to our knowledge, at least) and so I'm very puzzled as to why Google thinks there are 1600+ links pointing to us. The only thing I can think of is that Google will recognise name="author" content as a link... seems strange, though. Plus the content="" only contains our company name, not our URL. Can anybody shed any light on this for me? Thanks guys!
Technical SEO | | RiceMedia0 -
No inbound links. Should I link-build or create new content?
I have a PR4 site with good traffic but the blog is not very popular--the posts do not generate any backlinks and hardly get any traffic. Yet, I continue to kick out a new post every week. Site: http://www.stadriemblems.com/
Technical SEO | | UnderRugSwept
Blog: http://www.stadriemblems.com/blog/ I keep posting content so that Google keeps crawling the site and viewing it as fresh (and yes, I'm posting for my human visitors' benefit too!), but I'm wondering if eventually this will hurt more than help if Google detects all these new pages are not being linked to, and therefore starts viewing the site as low quality and devalues it. So should I: Keep posting Stop posting and build links to the posts Try to promote my blog to get more traffic and hope people link to it Something else or some combination of the above0