Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Link Juice + multiple links pointing to the same page
-
Scenario
The website has a menu consisting of 4 linksHome | Shoes | About Us | Contact Us
Additionally within the body content we write about various shoe types. We create a link with the anchor text "Shoes" pointing to www.mydomain.co.uk/shoes
In this simple example, we have 2 instances of the same link pointing to the same url location.
We have 4 unique links.
In total we have 5 on page links.Question
How many links would Google count as part of the link juice model?
How would the link juice be weighted in terms of percentages?
If changing the anchor text in the body content to say "fashion shoes" have a different impact?Any other advise or best practice would be appreciated.
Thanks Mark
-
Hi Remus & Kurt,
Thank you for your advise.
Mark
-
Remus's answer is good. I would add to that that Google has their first link filter. If you have two links pointing from page A to page B, Google only passes link authority (pagerank) and reputation (keywords in the anchor text and relevant surrounding text) through the first link that appears in the code. The second link does not pass anything. So, whatever the anchor text of the first link in the code is, that's the anchor text Google is going to use (Remus is right that anchor text has become less important).
The second link does, however, dilute the amount of pagerank passed. So, like Remus pointed out, each link in your scenario only passes 20% of the pagerank. Since Google ignores the second link to the shoe page, that 20% of pagerank does not get passed. I'm not sure if it stays on the page or just gets lost.
So, what does this all mean? From an SEO standpoint, you want the link with the targeted keyword to be first in the code if you have more than one link to a page. Also, you don't really want to have two links to the same page on that one page. Now, that's from an SEO perspective. From a user perspective, it may make perfect sense to have that second link and the page may convert better. So, you'd just have to decide which is more important...and it's probably the user perspective that's more important.
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com -
Hi Mark, really good questions.
- How many links would Google count as part of the link juice model?
There are a lot of opinions about this subject and there is no clear answer (it's really hard to test). Some time ago Google removed the effect of "nofollow" attribute for internal links, to cut the advantage SEO's gained by "pagerank sculpting". I think they did this so that search engine optimizers don't have a big advantage over standard websites. My personal opinion is that in terms of link juice lost Google would count 5, but the page benefiting won't get double the value. I think Google would only count the advantages of one of those links, whichever the best (probably the one in content. But on the other side, the link juice lost is not so important. The rest of the pages won't necessarily rank for popular terms.
I think that in-content links get way more advantages than just the "juice" and anchor text. The neighboring text is also important, the fact that it's in a block of text it's also important. Also it brings value to the users, who, might want to see all the shoes models when reading about them. I think you should definitely use this approach but just make sure you don't take it to an extreme.
-
20% to each link, but the shoes page won't get 20x2 from those 2 duplicate, maybe it will get 25 + some other advantages (personal oppinion!)
-
Changing anchor text had some effect in the past, but recently anchor text has less and less importance. It probably still has value. It's still an important ranking factor for 2013, and I would use it if I was you. But I would bring it to a new level. I would also think about the words in the context of the link. Try to link from all the relevant sections of the websites, and as you point to the shoes page from different contexts, naturally, the anchor text will change. For example you could link through our "shoe collection" from an article which compares between your shoes and competitor shoes.
I wrote an article for YouMoz a few years ago, some concepts might be a bit outdated because the ranking factors changed a lot since then. However it might give you some ideas to explore from a new perspective
-> An Intelligent Way to Plan Your Internal Linking 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
-
Switching from Http to Https, but what about images and image link juice?
Hi Ya'll. I'm transitioning our http version website to https. Important question: Do images have to have 301 redirects? If so, how and where? Please send me a link or explain best practices. Best, Shawn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1241 -
If I nofollow outbound external links to minimize link juice loss > is it a good/bad thing?
OK, imagine you have a blog, and you want to make each blog post authoritative so you link out to authority relevant websites for reference. In this case it is two external links per blog post, one to an authority website for reference and one to flickr for photo credit. And one internal link to another part of the website like the buy-now page or a related internal blog post. Now tell me if this is a good or bad idea. What if you nofollow the external links and leave the internal link untouched so all internal links are dofollow. The thinking is this minimizes loss of link juice from external links and keeps it flowing through internal links to pages within the website. Would it be a good idea to lay off the nofollow tag and leave all as do follow? or would this be a good way to link out to authority sites but keep the link juice internal? Your thoughts are welcome. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rich_Coffman0 -
Do I have to many internal links which is diluting link juice to less important pages
Hello Mozzers, I was looking at my homepage and subsequent category landing pages on my on my eCommerce site and wondered whether I have to many internal links which could in effect be diluting link juice to much of the pages I need it to flow. My homepage has 266 links of which 114 (43%) are duplicate links which seems a bit to much to me. One of my major competitors who is a national company has just launched a new site design and they are only showing popular categories on their home page although all categories are accessible from the menu navigation. They only have 123 links on their home page. I am wondering whether If I was to not show every category on my homepage as some of them we don't really have any sales from and only concerntrate on popular ones there like my competitors , then the link juice flowing downwards in the site would be concerntated as I would have less links for them to flow ?... Is that basically how it works ? Is there any negatives with regards to duplicate links on either home or category landing page. We are showing both the categories as visual boxes to select and they are also as selectable links on the left of a page ? Just wondered how duplicate links would be treated? Any thoughts greatly appreciated thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Do internal links from non-indexed pages matter?
Hi everybody! Here's my question. After a site migration, a client has seen a big drop in rankings. We're trying to narrow down the issue. It seems that they have lost around 15,000 links following the switch, but these came from pages that were blocked in the robots.txt file. I was wondering if there was any research that has been done on the impact of internal links from no-indexed pages. Would be great to hear your thoughts! Sam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blink-SEO0 -
Multiple Internal links to same destinations
My company is redoing our homepage and there will be 4 links to our main play pages (5 games). 2 in the menu and 2 within the content. I was thinking I should no follow one of the links on the homepage + 1 in the menu so that we don't have link dilution from having multiple internal links to the same destination within 1 page. Does this make sense? Any downside of this or suggestions of a solution that may be more effective? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
What is the point of having images clickable loading to their own page?
Hello, Noticed a lot of sites, usually wordpress (seems to be the default) have the images in their posts clickable that load to their own page, showing just the image, usually a .jpg page. I know these pages seem to be easily indexed into google image search and can drive traffic to those specific pages... My questions are... 1. What is the point of driving traffic to a page that is just the image, there are no links to other pages, no ads, nothing... 2. can you redirect these .jpg pages to the actual post page? I ask because on google image search, there are 3 links to click (website, image link, image page), when you click to view the image, it loads the .jpg page, why not have that .jpg redirect to the real content page that has ads and also has other links. Is this white-hat? 3. Do these pages with just images have any negative effect on optimization since they are just images, no content? 4. Can you monetize these .jpg pages? 5. What is the best practice? I understand there is value in traffic, but what is the point of image traffic if I can't monetize those pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Is it better "nofollow" or "follow" links to external social pages?
Hello, I have four outbound links from my site home page taking users to join us on our social Network pages (Twitter, FB, YT and Google+). if you look at my site home page, you can find those 4 links as 4 large buttons on the right column of the page: http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/ Here is my question: do you think it is better for me to add the rel="nofollow" directive to those 4 links or allow Google to follow? From a PR prospective, I am sure that would be better to apply the nofollow tag, but I would like Google to understand that we have a presence on those 4 social channels and to make clearly a correlation between our official website and our official social channels (and then to let Google understand that our social channels are legitimate and related to us), but I am afraid the nofollow directive could prevent that. What's the best move in this case? What do you suggest to do? Maybe the nofollow is irrelevant to allow Google to correlate our website to our legitimate social channels, but I am not sure about that. Any suggestions are very welcome. Thank you in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau9 -
Multiple URLs for the same page
I am working with a client and recently discovered that they have several URLs that go to the same page. http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebMarketingandDesign
http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx
http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=FF
http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=FS
http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?nav=FF
http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?nav=ffhttp://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=MShttp://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?nav=
http://www.maps.com/FunFacts.aspx?nav=FF#
http://www.maps.com/FunFacts
http://www.maps.com/funfacts.aspx?.nav=FF I am afraid this is happening all over the site. So, my question is: Is this hurting the SEO and how? If so what is the best way to go about fixing this problem? Thanks for your help!0