I have a client where every page has over 100 links
-
Some links are in the main navigation (it has a secondary and tertiary level) and some links are repeated in the left navigation. Every page has over 100 links if crawled.
From a practical standpoint, would you (a) delete the 3rd-level links (or at least argue for that) or (b) rel='nofollow' them? From a usability standpoint, this setup works as they are almost one click from everything. From a crawl standpoint, I see some pages missed in google (the sitemap has over 200 links).
Looking for the best on-page current SEO advice to set these guys on the road to success.
-
The site isn't low quality (there are no ads and they don't sell anything -- it is a scientific site) -- it's just that EVERY link is available as a secondary or tertiary link. My initial thought is to simply get rid of the tertiary level within the main nav, cutting out roughly half of the links. On any inside page, they are available on a left-side nav anyway. The smallest number of links is about 110, the largest is pushing 250. I just wondered about everyone's opinion.
Rendering the menu via jQuery as Chad suggests might help. This is a wordpress-based site so I'll have to really look into it as they have to edit it too.
We've already begun mapping out clicks as goals (conversions) within GA.
-
If the site has good authority/PR I wouldnt worry about it although I would look at in-page analytics to see whether people actually click the links. If its setup like this to pass link juice the above is more applicable, if not look at whether people are actually clicking the links and if they arent id suggest an alternative navigation.
-
First off, never use rel='nofollow' to your own site.
Personally, I would trim up the left menu if you can, or find an easier / creative JavaScript-driven way to present the data. The 100 links thing isn't a law written in stone. SEOmoz's tools do yell about it if you go over 100 links. This "100 link lore" comes from a Matt Cutts blog post:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-many-links-per-page/
If you look close, you may notice that there are more than 100 links even on the page that Matt wrote about this. It's kind of a loose guideline in my eyes. From my own professional experience, if every page on your site has 500 links, you're going to hurt for it. But if you have 125 links on quite a few pages, or put out a blog post that's just an insane resource that links to a few hundred people, you'll still be just fine.
I'd think about it as just one more signal of a potentially abusive or low quality site. If your site isn't under heavy scrutiny for other reasons, and you don't go totally nuts with links, you'll probably be just fine, but there is a lot of wisdom in Matt Cutt's post all the same. Eliminate the unnecessary and things will work better, in and out of Google.
Built some companies, sold some companies. Currently building https://roi.fyi.
-
Use jQuery- it will basically solve all your to many links on a page.
Chad
-
nofollow is not a good idea if you have a good pagerank I wouldn't worry about it. But remove duplicates first..
-
We had a similar issue with one site -- a footer with a ton of links to all parts of the site, duplicated on every page. The feeling was that it flattened out the site's link structure too much, so we changed it so that the footer was loaded via ajax on page load.
In that case, I don't think it made much difference performance-wise so I can't say for certain if it will help you. But, it is a way to clean up your link structure.
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
-
Duplicate Page Titles
It seems as though we are being flagged for duplicate page titles when really they are slightly different. Is it better to remove the "dart board" or "dart board backboard" from all the product titles? We were doing this for optimal SEO - to rank for the search of "dart board" - but is it really hurting us? for example, our product titles are: Obama dart board backboard, Texas dart board backboard, Oklahoma dart board backboard, etc. Yet they are being flagged as duplicate titles.
On-Page Optimization | | DartsDecor0 -
Is it better to create more pages of content or expand on current pages of content?
I am assuming that one way of improving the rankings of current pages will be to create more content on the keywords used... should this be an expansion of the content on current pages I am optimising for a keyword or is it better to keep creating new pages and if we are creating new pages is it best to use an extension of the keyword on the new page – for example if we are optimising one page for ‘does voltage optimisation work’ would it then be worth creating a page optimised for ‘does voltage optimisation work in hotels’ for example and so on? I am guessing maybe both might help, this is just a question I have had from one of my clients.
On-Page Optimization | | TWSI1 -
On-page keyword usage
SEOMOZ gave me all zeros for keyword usage. Why? The site is www.grass2greens.com and the keywords are "Asheville Landscaping Edible." The site includes these words in the title page and throughout the body text. I am not really sure, but maybe one cause for these low keyword usage ratings might be redirects or some meta tag issues, but I am really not sure. Any ideas?
On-Page Optimization | | dcaudio0 -
What is the best way to manage industry required duplicate Important Safety Information (ISI) content on every page of a site?
Hello SEOmozzer! I have recently joined a large pharmaceutical marketing company as our head SEO guru, and I've encountered a duplicate content related issue here that I'd like some help on. Because there is so much red tape in the pharmaceutical industry, there are A LOT of limitations on website content, medication and drug claims, etc. Because of this, it is required to have Important Safety Information (ISI) clearly stated on every page of the client's website (including the homepage). The information is generally pretty lengthy, and in some cases is longer than the non-ISI content on each page. Here is an example: http://www.xifaxan.com/ All content under the ISI header is required on each page. My questions are: How will this duplicated content on each page affect our on-page optimization scores in the eyes of search engines? Is Google seeing this simply as duplicated content on every page, or are they "smart" enough to understand that because it is a drug website, this is industry standard (and required)? Aside from creating more meaty, non-ISI content for the site, are there any other suggestions you have for handling this potentially harmful SEO situation? And in case you were going to suggest it, we cannot simply have an image of the content, as it may not be visible by all internet users. We've already looked into that 😉 Thanks in advance! Dylan
On-Page Optimization | | MedThinkCommunications0 -
On Page Optimisation Reports
Firstly sorry if this has already been answered - I did look I promise.
On-Page Optimization | | Jock
Secondly sorry if the answer to this is blatently obvious! In the process of trying to optimise my landing pages, I am using On Page Optimisation reports. I have several (ok lots) with F grades which is not surprising as the landing page is not the landing page optimised for a certain keyword. If I change the landing page to the one that I have for a certain keyword then hey presto A or B grade (clever me)! Now here's the thing - presumably the landing page that is listed by default is the one that Google "sees" for a particular keyword. How do I change this if I can or do I have to be patient or am I just being plain daft?! Many thanks0 -
Blog page outranks static page for KW -- why?
Blog page ranks 10 in Google, while the static page is on page 7. What makes it more interesting is that the blog page scores an "F" with the Term Target tool while the static page scores an "A". Static page has more inbound links and a mR/mT of 3.89/ 4.54 vs. 3.71/ 4.14 for the blog page. Any ideas on how to approach this one?
On-Page Optimization | | 540SEO0 -
Spammy keywords on a page
My client's website has a box of text on each page that is spammy and horrible to read and stuffed with keywords. The text boxes are there only for search engines as they mean nothing to humans. I say remove them as it must be doing more harm than good. However, my client is scared to remove them as the text has been there on each page for ten years and he is worried about a drop in visitor numbers if they are removed. Is he right to be worried?
On-Page Optimization | | mascotmike0 -
Linking Back to the Same Page
What are the other seo's opinions on linking the same keyword you are targeting lets take an example like Trampolines. So we have a Online shop selling trampolines would you feel it a good or bad thing to link the keyword trampolines from the homepage to the homepage almost creating a loop. Some SEO's say yes some say no ?
On-Page Optimization | | onlinemediadirect0