Best On-Site Internal Linking Practices?
-
Hi everyone,
Our company works extensively with ecommerce website, and we're beginning to wonder with all of the impending Google updates what our best bets for internal linking practices will be, in particular when it comes to menu options. We typically set up our navigation with top-level categories in the main menu, then drop downs to the sub-category level pages. Our question is, should the links in the drop-down menus be followed, and if so, should they be followed links across all pages of the website, or just on the homepage menu list, or not at all?
We're trying to figure out what will pass the most internal linking power without being too much and overly "spammy," I guess.
Thanks for your input!
-
Thanks so much for the input, everyone. Really appreciate all of your opinions. We'll do some experimenting with the navigation layout as per your recommendations and see how we can make it work for us!
Thanks again, guys!
-
Takeshi is right, James- you gain nothing by adding nofollow to internal links. In addition, if you attract attention with a lot of it, you could even incur a penalty. Matt Cutts has stated more than once that nofollowing internal links isn't advisable, except perhaps in limited special circumstances, such as to a contact form or privacy policy. If you get carried away with internal nofollow, it could look like you're trying to sculpt pagerank, and that could cause you problems you don't want to have.
-
Again, you don't want to nofollow your internal links. Nofollowing your links has no positive impact, and just prevents any link value from flowing to your internal pages.
If you have a particularly large category structure, one thing you may want to try is limiting the links in your drop-downs to the top subcategories. Even if you have 10 different menus with 20 different subcategories each, chances are 80% of your users are only selecting 20% of the links (or less). Install a site tracker such as CrazyEgg or Clciktale to figure out which links your users actually use, and eliminate the ones that don't get many clicks.
So your navigation would look something like this:
Automobiles
Tires
Oil
Batteries
Accessories
More Auto Products -
Have you tried turning the drop down off and running a test to see how your goals compare? Or even if just the pages / visit etc.. drop.
-
We do have that implemented on some sites...but for others, we prefer the drop-down feature for easier navigation on the user end. So when a user hovers over the top-level category, the sub-category options appear below it, so less clicking through to a number of different pages - users can go straight to the sub-category they're looking for straight from the homepage. I guess these are really the links we're curious about - the sub-category links in the drop-down menus...to follow or not to follow?
Thanks for all of your input so far - much appreciated!!
-
Having just the top level categories in the main menu like you said is a good option. No need to overload the users with too many choices. Then once the user is in a specific category, the sidebar nav can show navigation links for subcategories.
-
The only issue I think we would run into with this is that some of our catalogs get rather large, and we don't want to have too MANY on-page links. We know that having no-follow links won't cause more link power to flow to other links, but we're wondering what would be the best, most efficient, most powerful way to handle a large catalog without overloading the links on each page...
-
Ooops, I'd done this on my own site.
We had a menu linking to all pages on every page. I tried limiting this but the design of the site put some limitations on me, so I implemented rel=nofollow on some internal pages....
I think now I'll go remove them.....
-
Nofollowing a link does not cause more link power to flow to your other links, it just causes that link juice that would have gone to that page to "evaporate", resulting in a loss of link equity. In general, you NEVER want to nofollow your own pages.
As far as internal linking for ecommerce sites goes, I generally look to amazon.com & overstock.com for good site architecture and good ecommerce SEO in general.
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
-
My site is linked from over 900 "The Globe"-domains - disavow or not?
Hi! As some of you may be familiar with, there is a giant spam-network with the same design and same page title on all domains: "The Globe - The world's most visited web pages". For example: theglobe.at
Link Building | | Sindre
theglobe.co.za
www.internet-search.us I've now discovered that over 900 of these spam-domains link to my site. My plan was of course to disavow them all, but Google is explicit on telling me to be careful. «Only disavow if you are certain that the links are damaging to your rankings». And to be honest, I'm not sure. Also: it seems drastic to disavow almost a thousand pages. I'm afraid to mess something up. What would you do?3 -
Best Software To Alert On Incoming Links?
Hi Guys, I've got most of the software I need for general link analysis, Moz/Majestic etc. But what I am lacking is software that would give me an update when one of my websites receives an incoming link? That is if there is such software available. All suggestions and help appreciated. Sam
Link Building | | Sandicliffe0 -
Links from spam sites
Hi! Thank you in advance for your help. Few months ago we suffered a content spam attack. Now, We have discovered that we have imbound links pointing the spam content from external spam and untrusted sites. Could be this affect our ranking? In this case... How can we notify to Google that we refuse these imbound links? Cheers, Luis
Link Building | | delcerro0 -
Can copyright links to your site have a negative impact on your SEO?
many of the websites we designed have a copyright link in the footer. Like: webdesign by company name then this is made a hyperlink to our company website. Some of these websites have a high PR and other metrics but rarely are about webdesign. What is a clever thing to do? Tom
Link Building | | Onlinq0 -
Links from Related Sites with Low PR or semi-related sites with High PR?
Is it better to get a link from a site with lower PR but related content or higher PR but semi-related or unrelated content? For example, if I sell shoes, would a link from a PR1 or PR2 shoe or apparel site be better or a link from PR4 website that sells books be better? I'm not talking about sites with completely unrelated content, but how relevant is PR in obtaining relevant links if I am trying to raise the PR and rankings of my own site?
Link Building | | applesofgold0 -
Best Link Building technique using SEOMoz tools & Open Site Explorer
Hi, We've been with SEOMoz for a year or two now, but have have kept an eye out for productive link building tools to help the team. To be honest we're struggling with Open Site Explorer because, although it enables us to discover competitors links it doesn't provide much link management functionality. A simple example would be the ability for Open Site Explorer to show links to domains which my clients already have in a different colour, so that we don't waste time exploring dead ends. I'd be very interested to hear tips how other people use the SEOMoz tools to manage their link building as I suspect we may be missing a trick or two... Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | JonathanSmith0 -
Best way to create deep links - Building links to inner pages
I am looking for a cost effective way to rank 30 inner pages, which are all low competition, long tail keywords. What type of links are the best for this type of project, social bookmarks, article marketing, high pr links, etc.... Also who would be good to hire for this type of project?
Link Building | | newcitymoving0 -
If I write a PR release on a site such as PRweb with anchor-text links that is picked up and published by other news sites, do the engines consider this duplicate content or additional, beneficial links?
I recently wrote a news release on PRweb that was picked up identically by 8 other news websites, with the same anchor-text links as the original. Is the reproduction of duplicate content and links across different websites like this to the benefit or detriment of SEO and ranking power? Some of the links are: http://www.mynewsdesk.com/uk/view/pressrelease/eventa-new-eventa-christmas-parties-website-is-launched-648923?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Alert&utm_content=pressrelease http://www.prweb.com/releases/christmasparties/neweventasite/prweb8562064.htm Many thanks!!
Link Building | | RobertHill0