Does the home page must get the biggest amount of internal links?
-
Hi All,
I have an e-commerce website with thousands of unique pages.
The site is built with quick access through the navigation bar to the main product categories.
All of the product pages have navigation trees in them.
What happened is that in one of the main categories I have so many pages (products) that it actually gets more links than the home page - it is getting the links both from the menu (in each page in the site) and from the product pages that belong to that category whereas the homepage gets only the one link from the menu.Is that OK or should I add a level in the navigation tree that points to the homepage?
Thanks
-
I, too, work with a site that has many (thousands) of product pages and dozens of categories. Over time, the homepage did get the most links and it ranks for the brand - which is fine. What's better for the user is that the category or product pages rank for specific keywords. I mean, for the best user experience, I don't want someone to have to go to the homepage and navigate down a few layers to get to what they want. Links to those deeper pages have helped make them more visible. The more pages that rank for the right keywords = more online real estate and more ways for the audience to find you.
So, it depends on your strategy and preference - and - is it better for the user to go to the homepage or to the product page? And, what's the reason those two would compete against each other for keywords (if that's the case).
All the links into the site will eventually help the domain authority.
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
-
Getting Rid Of Spammy 301 Links From An Old Site
A relatively new site I'm working on has been hit really hard by Panda, due to over optimization of 301 external links which include exact keyword phrases, from an old site. Prior to the Panda update, all of these 301 redirects worked like a charm, but now all of these 301's from the old url are killing the new site, because all the hyper-text links include exact keyword matches. A couple weeks ago, I took the old site completely down, and removed the htaccess file, removing the 301's and in effect breaking all of these bad links. Consequently, if one were to type this old url, you'd be directed to the domain registrar, and not redirected to the new site. My hope is to eliminate most of the bad links, that are mostly on spammy sites, that aren't worth linking to. My thought is these links would eventually disappear from G. My concern is that this might not work, because G won't re-index these links, because once they're indexed by G, they'll be there forever. My fear is causing me to conclude I should hedge my bets, and just disavow these sites using the disavow tool in WMT. IMO, the disavow tool is an action of last resort, because I don't want to call attention to myself, since this site doesn't have a manual penalty inflected on it. Any opinions or advise would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alrockn0 -
Any downsides of (permanent)redirecting 404 pages to more generic pages(category page)
Hi, We have a site which is somewhat like e-bay, they have several categories and advertisements posted by customers/ client. These advertisements disappear over time and turn into 404 pages. We have the option to redirect the user to the corresponding category page, but we're afraid of any negative impact of this change. Are there any downsides, and is this really the best option we have? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vhendriks0 -
How can I fix "Too Many On Page Links"?
One of the warnings from SEO Moz says that we have "too many on page links" on a series of pages on my website. The pages it's giving me these warnings on are on my printing sample pages. I'm assuming that it's because of my left navigation. You can see an example here: http://www.3000doorhangers.com/door-hanger-design-samples/deck-and-fence-door-hanger-samples/ Any suggestions on how to fix this warning? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JimDirectMailCoach0 -
How many links would you need to rank up in page rank?
White hat **** Can 20 website with page rank of 3 make your site rank higher?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | spidersite0 -
.GOV Link - same impact on my site's rankings whether link to home or Gov related category?
I own a job site and I am about to get a link from a .GOV. My site has a category called "State Jobs". Should I ask the ".Gov" to link to my homepage or to the state job page and use the anchor text "State Jobs". I understand "State Jobs" page would get a big kick by that being the anchor text and linking to that specific page, but the question I have is this: for my site as a whole (homepage and various categories) would they get around the same "push up" whether the linking is to 1) my homepage with anchor text being my site's name or 2) to the state job specific page and in this case the anchor text would be "State Jobs"? thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0 -
Non-home page ranking higher, very odd
One of my new clients has an eCommerce site selling chair mats, that ranks first page for their primary keyword ("chair mats"), but the serp is not showing their home page... It is an odd "resources" page that mostly just has outbound links. I've never seen this. Also, there are no external inbound links to this particular page. How can this be ranking higher than the home page... weeeeird. Update: I haven't done any optimization yet... and yes, I know the site is outdated 🙂 My location is set to San Diego. If I change it (New York City), the Resources2.htm page goes away from the page 1 ranking, and I get a page 2 home page ranking. This is so strange 😕
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Joes_Ideas0 -
It Doesn’t Matter Where You Point Links, Google Will Pick The Page
Hi Guys, I have a site that ranks quite well in a very competitive vertical and the company is now planning to do a site relaunch. SEO is very important to them and all of the sites within in the top 10 have the primary keyword in the urls example search: key1 key2 site.com/key1-key2/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VividLime
site.com/ key1key2/
site.com/key1key2.php Our site is the only one that is positioned within the top 10 without the keyword in the url and homepage only listing so the top 10 result looks like search: key1 key2 site.com/key1-key2/ site.com/ key1key2/ site.com/key1key2.php oursite.com sitekey2.com/key1-key2/
key1site.com/key1key2.html Currently we do not have a separate landing page for the target keyword hence why link building is focused on the homepage. As part of the consultation, I recommended we create a landing page for our primary keyword so we get **oursite.com/key1-key2/ **and shift the on-page keyword balance towards this page. the hope is, we get search: key1 key2 site.com/key1-key2/ site.com/ key1key2/ site.com/key1key2.php oursite.com/key1-key2 sitekey2.com/key1-key2/
key1site.com/key1key2.html Would Google simply replace my current domain only list for the most relevant url for a term? Does anyone have any experience with this? Or would i need to build links into the new url for the change to take place. what i'm hoping for and expecting, is for somthing like this to happen http://www.seowizz.net/2011/04/it-doesnt-matter-where-you-point-links-google-will-pick-the-page.html0 -
Internal Pages outranking homepage in SERPs
First of all I would like to stress that this relates to a new site which is just a few weeks old, however it is something that has regularly happened to a lot of our websites in the past, so I am wondering if there is some underlying problem. We have recently setup the domain www.calcioitaliashop.com. The domain name itself "calcio italia shop" is actually one of the main keywords we are targeting. However, when we enter this into google (we are using .co.uk version), a lot of the category pages appear, yet the root domain does not. Does this indicate some coding problem with the website? I thought we might have some robots problem, but running a site://www.calcioitaliashop.com command shows that the homepage is in the index, so I am just wondering what could be causing these results?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ukss19840