Pin It Button, Too Many Links, & a Javascript question...
-
One of the sites I work for has some massive on-page link problems. We've been trying to come up with workarounds to lower the amount of links without making drastic changes to the page design and trying to stay within SEO best practices. We had originally considered the NoFollow route a few months back but that's not viable. We changed around some image and text links so they were wrapped together as one link instead of being two links to the same place. We're currently running tests on some pages to see how else to handle the issue.
What has me stumped now though is that the damned Pinterest Pin Button counts as an external link and we've added it to every image in our galleries. Originally we found that having a single Pin It button on a page was pulling incorrect images and not listing every possible image on the page... so to make sure that a visitor can pin the exact picture they want, we added the button to everything. We've been seeing a huge uptick in Pinterest traffic so we're definitely happy with that and don't want to get rid of the button. But if we have 300 pictures (which are all links) on a page with Pin It buttons (yet more links) we then have 600+ links on the page. Here's an example page: http://www.fauxpanels.com/portfolio-regency.php
When talking with one of my coders, he suggested some form of javascript might be capable of making the button into an event instead of a link and that could be a way to keep the Pin It button while lowering on-page links. I'm honestly not sure how that would work, whether Google would still count it as a link, or whether that is some form of blackhat cloaking technique we should be wary of.
Do any of you have experience with similar issues/tactics that you could help me with here? Thanks.
TL;DR Too many on page links. Coder suggests javascript "alchemy" to turn lead into gold button links into events. Would this lower links? Or is it bad? Form of Cloaking?
-
This test showed a little light on what is indexed typically: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/can-google-really-access-content-in-javascript-really
-
Loading link via JS is fairly standard technique. (See http://sharethis.com/ or http://www.addthis.com/). Google will index some JS created content so you may have to delay the link tag creation until a mouseenter event to get the desired effect.
Added bonus: using well written JS code can lighten the code weight of the page allowing it to load faster. Currently, each Pin icon contains a div, a link and an image tag. If you use prototyping, JS can replicate all this content from the attributes of the primary image tag very quickly. (I see you load jQuery so this task is very easy to accomplish)
Also, move the rel="words" in the link into the img tag as an alt attribute. Current the images lack alt tags which isn't the best. Using keywords in the rel attribute isn't correct. It is supposed to mark up the relationship to between items and "Stacked Stone Panels" isn't a relationship. You may have been thinking of the title attribute.
Next, you are loading WAY too many resource files (mainly js). A few items twice. Try combining them into a few minified files. There is a lot of work that could be done to speed up the site: http://www.webpagetest.org/result/130320_PT_12RV/ over 25 seconds to load.
Think about making a sprite of the images, it would save a ton of requests and downloads. Also, pagination, if done correctly, could save a lot of time.
-
Thanks guys! My coder is going to look over all of the best possible ways we could implement this and then we're going to see about doing a little testing on one of our galleries. Thanks again.
-
To my knowledge, Google does only "simple" Javascript. For instance
will be spidered as a link. if you have your click event do something more arcane (like call a function) it won't be. If you want to further obfuscate it from Google, add your click event by using an observer (like JQuery's $().click() function).
Google, to my knowledge, has never spidered AJAX. AJAX may not contain any human readable content.
-
No known negatives associated with doing that? If not then we might give it a test run on one of the galleries.
-
There was no negative impact after the Pin It button was added and effectively doubled the number of on-page links.
As for the Ajax loading idea, that was actually another one of the ideas that my coder had but I wasn't sure of what the effect would be on Googlebot indexing and following images. Though all the newer photos do get added to the top which would be visible if we implemented that.
-
That is definitely a lot of links... but have you noticed a negative SEO impact because of the pin it buttons? Having that many links isn't ideal, but it probably won't affect your site that much.
Alternatively, you can try loading some of the images via AJAX so that they aren't all displayed at once, and only load when the user scrolls down.
-
In my opinion I believe the correct implementation is to use the JavaScript event. I've seen it implemented this way on a few ecommerce sites that I know are doing well.
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
-
Using Multiple links/names for the same product?
I am being asked to change these product links on the home page: Home/Condo
Web Design | | RoxBrock
Watercraft/Boat to Home
Condo
Watercraft
Boat (Along with several other product links) How does this affect the customer experience/usability, and SEO? Is it a good idea or is it confusing? Thank you.0 -
Spotted Hidden Omiod Links in Footer - What do you think is Going on Here?
Hi guys, Hoping one of you have come across this before. While taking a look at the source code for a website I've recently started working on, I spotted some 'display:none' code in the footer of the page. Here's a snapshot of the code: close XMETAhead title : 404 Page Not Found | ( 39 chrs ) [http://www.omiod.com/chrome-extensions/meta-seo-inspector/info.php?meta=description&cont=404 Page Not Found.](<a href=)" title="more about description" target="_blank" class="ad_seo_link">description : 404 Page Not Found( 170 chrs )[http://www.omiod.com/chrome-extensions/meta-seo-inspector/info.php?meta=keywords&cont=404, 404 error page,](<a href=) " title="more about keywords" target="_blank" class="ad_seo_link">keywords : 404, 404 error page ( 7 items )SCRIPT![](<a href=)http://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.google-analytics.com">www.google-analytics.com http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js <div< a="">class="ad_seo_title">HTML5 report</div<>Doctype is not HTML5, there are no HTML5 tags, but at least no obsolete HTML tags were found. 1/5
Web Design | | ecommercebc0 -
Sitemap Question - Very Old Ecommerce Site, Never Used A Map
I help manage a family website, that has about 10,000 products... It was top ranked since 1996, then got smacked by Penguin and recovered but its still receiving only a fraction of the natural traffic it used to get. Something we have never used... Is a sitemap. I'm curious if anyone knows reliable software that will generate a sitemap? My cart is custom built, website uses html pages across the board. Dynamic content and parameters are set up properly, onsite seo is in the excellent range. The only thing that I haven't been utilizing is a sitemap. Because the cart was hand built, it would a huge convenience to use a lightweight program thats compatible with any website, has parameter settings, exclusions and anything else useful to negate any duplicate content. I have a few highly dynamic pages as well... If anyone knows a product or a possible solution, it would be much appreciated. Working it up myself would be very time consuming. Thx
Web Design | | Southbay_Carnivorous_Plants0 -
Question re. crawlable textual content
I have a client who is struggling to fit crawlable textual content on their pages. I'm wondering if we can add a "Learn More..." feature that works as a mouse over pop up. When a page visitor runs their curser over the link or button, a window bubble pops up and textual content about the page will show. Not knowing much about code, can text in this format be crawlable by search engines and count as unique and relevant content? Thanks, Dino
Web Design | | Dino640 -
Footer Links For Web Design Agencies - Bad?
So today Google have updated their Webmaster Guidelines and they have drawn particular attention to their update relating to Link Schemes. http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356 Unless you have had your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears since February then most people are aware of the types of link schemes that the updated is refering to but there is one area that isn't so black and white for me. "Here are a few common examples of unnatural links that violate our guidelines: Widely distributed links in the footers of various sites" We are a design agency and we design and build lots of websites for our clients. It is pretty standard practice for agencies to add a credit to the footer of websites and we pick up a lot of work from people that see a site that they like and click through the footer link to our site. Our footer credit is standard on all of the websites that we create:- Website by Teapot Creative Only the 'Teapot Creative' part of the credit is anchor text so we are only linking using our brand name with no intention of manipulating search results. Is this going to hurt us? or will the fact that we are only linking using our branded term and without any SEO intent keep us in the clear? Thanks.
Web Design | | AdeLewis
Ade.0 -
Keyword rich footer links negative effect
Based on bits and pieces of information I've read on SEOmoz, am I correct to state that:
Web Design | | Partouter
"Keyword-rich footer links effect pages negatively in terms of the keyword referenced in the anchor text?" This means footer links in Thanks in advance fellow Mozzers!0 -
Footer Links for Design Shops - Do They Help or Hurt?
I work on SEO for a number of clients at our agency, including our in-house SEO for our own website. I use Open Site Explorer all the time to analyze my competition in the SERPs and try to gain links from this insight. However, I've noticed a number of agencies and design shops that place a link in the footer of websites they've designed and created. For example "Site design by ABC Agency (hyperlinked to the agency's home page). Or I've seen small logos or graphics that link to the designer's site and use the "alt tag" to get stronger anchor text. From a design perspective, I don't care for this, but as a SEO...I can see why. We've designed a number of websites and have more in the pipeline, but have not used this tactic before. It seems like an irrelevant link from a content/user standpoint, however, it seems to work for a lot of agencies and design shops. Any input from the SEOmoz community would be great. Is it a short-lived strategy? Does it help or hurt your link-building and "rapport" with Google, Bing, Yahoo? Thanks everyone.
Web Design | | PHDL0 -
Ecommerce web site with too many internal links
Hi, We're using Magento CE 1.4.0.1 for our ecommerce web site with a fairly flat navigation system i.e. 9 major categories display across the top menu that when you roll over display 2-20 sub categories (which take you to a groups of similar products) and then individual product pages. The categories and sub categories are available to click on as part of a dynamic Html menu system on each page. Each page also shows a small number of related products. This linking structure seems fairly standard and yet Seomoz throws up the error message, "Too Many On-page links" for most pages on our site. Do I need to really worry about this? Is there much can be done to improve this on an ecommerce web site with a large catalogue of products? I've looked at the Knowledge Base but I don't feel the existing responses adequately address the issue for ecommerce sites.
Web Design | | languedoc0