Too many on page links

[Anthony1982]

Hi i'm new to MOZ, after sacking my SEO consultant due to the penguin update. My site position isn't fantastic right now for my national and local search terms

The first problem i have is tackling too many on page links. I understand it should be 100 or less, unless users would benefit more. Looking at my links i have up to 200 on page links (which i know are not beneficial or user friendly).

If i give you an example this page has 208 links: http://www.drivejohnsons.co.uk/blog/page/3

Heres another one with 157 links: http://www.drivejohnsons.co.uk/author/admin/page/2

Here's one that isn't associated with my blog that has 188 links: http://www.drivejohnsons.co.uk/testimonials

On average most pages excluding the blog have around 120 links per page and i know thats to do with my Nav Bar - which i will sort out.

My question is: Because the majority of these high link pages are associated with my blog, will that affect my site SEO performance?

If yes, does anyone have any suggestions as to how i can reduce the total links on each page within my blog?

The more i blog, this number is only going to increase

Im using wordpress. I was just wondering if any of these imports would help ?

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Blogger

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Install the Blogger importer to import posts, comments, and users from a Blogger blog.

Blogroll

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Install the blogroll importer to import links in OPML format.

Categories and Tags Converter

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Install the category/tag converter to convert existing categories to tags or tags to categories, selectively.

LiveJournal

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Install the LiveJournal importer to import posts from LiveJournal using their API.

Movable Type and TypePad

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Install the Movable Type importer to import posts and comments from a Movable Type or TypePad blog.

RSS

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Install the RSS importer to import posts from an RSS feed.

Tumblr

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Install the Tumblr importer to import posts & media from Tumblr using their API.

WordPress

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Install the WordPress importer to import posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags from a WordPress export file.

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If anyone can help, i would very grateful.

[evolvingSEO]

Hi Anthony

100 links per page is not a rule anymore at all. Check out Matt's video from 2011.

I think you may have been hurt by some link building though. Check out this screenshot of your top anchor text according to open site explorer. You'll see a lot more commercial keywords for anchor text - and this is the sort of thing Google is not looking at so favorably anymore. You'll want to see if you can change the anchor text of those links to branded keywords if possible (not all, but as many as you can). And in addition you'll want to think about building new links that are more natural. I like PointBlank SEO's list of strategies: http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

And you should also focus a little on local SEO and local citations and review acquisition. I love Whitespark's Local Citation Finder and Moz's GetListed.org for help there.

It is great to clean up on-site stuff too of course! My post on WordPress SEO should help out there.

Good luck!

-Dan

[Rubix]

Hi Anthony,

This part is in your Meta Title not in Meta Description and there is a character limit on both. Meta Title shouldn't be more than 69 characters  and Meta title is 159

You can use 'http://www.charactercounter.co.uk/google-title-description-and-keyword-tool ' to check how long is your meta text is

You can maybe try something like this on Meta Description

Read driving test news and advice from Bedford (*) driving lessons expert instructure driveJohnson's blog. Bedford Test routes, diving test apps and more

(*) You can use Bedford or UK or other location name

For Meta Title, maybe you can try something like

Driving Test News and Advice | Location(*)  Driving Tutor | driveJohnson

Try to include keywords that you want to target in title and description, and check the length of the meta tags if they are short then you have chance to include more keywords.

I hope that helps.

[Anthony1982]

@Sida

But what sort of description do you write for: http://www.drivejohnsons.co.uk/2012/04 ??

"Welcome to driveJohnson's april 2012 category where you can find all of our articles that were written in 2012/04 to do with driving news and and advice"

It seems like an unnecessary page in my opinion that has over 200 on page links

[Rubix]

Too many page links issue drives me crazy and the main problem is that error comes up on MOZ campaigns but on forums I've been told that it is not something that would have negative effect on my SEO but it is just recommended to have less than 100 links. It'll be great if someone confirm this theory actually.

I recommend you to check Meta Tags, i've just checked the first link you've given and i think you can improve the Meta tags.

I also recommend you to work on Local seo rather than generic SEO, i think it'll be easier for you to rank and I believe users will be searching mainly local driving  instructors so i think you'll get good traffic from Local targeting.

[Anthony1982]

@ Braden... Thanks

Is there a way where i can clean up my Blog a bit more? Which ultimately would make it more user friendly too ?

In an ideal world I would like someone to click on my blog see the various categories and if they click on a category they can choose an article.

Would cutting out the date categories reduce URLS like this: http://www.drivejohnsons.co.uk/2012/11

[Branden_S]

Start by no index you tags and categories.  This will reduce your links and duplicate content penalties.

You should also look at reducing any random tags and categories.  Make sure they are all highly relevant to the article.  The more links you have, the less juice each link passes