Is SEO effected of putting an external link in the primary navigation of a website?
-
I have a customer, www.xxx.com. This site has good traffic, low bounce rate (28%), 2:00 min avg time on site, and 45% return visitor rating. No spam rankings, etc. Good load time.
Another site, www.yyy.com, has sent out a request for them to add them as a new link in www.xxx.com's primary navigation - using a title such as "abc" (not the name of the company or site of yyy.com). This second site, www.yyy.com, has a bounce rate of 98%, avg time on site is :30, and 10.2% return visitor rate. No spam flags noted in Open Site explorer. Plus they are asking other sites similar to www.xxx.com to do the same thing.
Questions/Concerns and Feedback appreciated:
-
Will yyy.com's analytics and quality pass back to xxx.com and cause Google or algorithms to flag or penalize xxx.com? (It ranks #1 for quite a few things.) The relevancy between the sites is good -same industry, same business objectives.
-
From a usability standpoint, isn't it more appropriate to place a link to another website in a different way? e.g. a promotional graphic wit a link or anchor text links?
-
Isn't it more appropriate to ask another business for links - not using the primary nav of a site? (It seems yyy.com is essentially asking other sites for 'free advertising/promotion.'
Thanks!
-
-
1) Analytics data is based on the UA code on the page. Assuming your pages are built on a template, by default the UA code for yyy.com is going to receive the visit, not yours. You could ask them to put your UA code on there but... that kind fo defeats the purpose of having analytics in the first place when you're blurring the data!
2) From a user perspective, it would be a little confusing to click a top nav link and end up on another website, so yeah I would suggest putting that link somewhere else on the site and making it clear that they're about to leave yours. Bonus points for using target="_blank" to open that other page in a new tab, also for user experience.
**3) **Right again. If yyy.com has nothing to do with xxx.com (as in the owners of X and Y don't even know each other) then it's a very strange request and one I'd be hesitant to even entertain.
The quality of their site can hurt you to a minor extent, I'd just be more worried about the confusing user experience and the fact that you'd be electively sending your users to their site, while they offer you... what?
The reason they want that link up there is simply the implied strength of that location. Link value is typically seen in order of priority from top left to bottom right; a link in your top nav gives them a sitewide link from almost the very top of every page. Good for them I suppose, though sitewide links aren't great, but not something you should do.
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
-
Negative SEO
I have got some idiot bombarding my site with spam links, most likely a negative SEO attempt. It started off very small and has ramped up to between five and 10 spam links per day. I think it may be having a slightly negative affect although difficult to tell. I can do a link cleanup, but I'm not sure that is a long term solution, I'm just going have to do it again in a few weeks time. Does anyone have any experience?
Technical SEO | | seoman100 -
What are best options for website built with navigation drop-down menus in JavaScript, to get those menus indexed by Google?
This concerns f5.com, a large website with navigation menus that drop down when hovered over. The sub nav items (example: “DDoS Protection”) are not cached by Google and therefore do not distribute internal links properly to help those sub-pages rank well. Best option naturally is to change the nav menus from JS to CSS but barring that, is there another option? Will Schema SiteNavigationElement work as an alternate?
Technical SEO | | CarlLarson0 -
Canonical link tag for https - any disadvantages for SEO?
Hi Mozzers, We have a website that has both http as well as https indexed. I proposed the solution of implementing a canonical link tag on all pages (including the login/secure ones). Any disadvantages I could expect? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | DeptAgency0 -
Is there software that makes it easier to reach out to websites and webmaster to have toxic links removed?
I'm currently trying to disavow toxic links that I have found on my site, that our previous SEO company created. Google requires that we reach out to the individual websites and try to have them removed. Does anyone know of software that makes this process automated or easer? I'm currently doing it manually, uhg! Also, is there software that can help you find toxic links? I'm currently also doing that manually, uhg! Thanks.
Technical SEO | | milehigh52800 -
404's in WMT are old pages and referrer links no longer linking to them.
Within the last 6 days, Google Webmaster Tools has shown a jump in 404's - around 7000. The 404 pages are from our old browse from an old platform, we no longer use them or link to them. I don't know how Google is finding these pages, when I check the referrer links, they are either 404's themselves or the page exists but the link to the 404 in question is not on the page or in the source code. The sitemap is also often referenced as a referrer but these links are definitely not in our sitemap and haven't been for some time. So it looks to me like the referrer data is outdated. Is that possible? But somehow these pages are still being found, any ideas on how I can diagnose the problem and find out how google is finding them?
Technical SEO | | rock220 -
SEO Checklist
Ok I know that this would be a huge over-simplification but I am wondering if there is (at least a bird's eye view) a checklist of SEO do's and dont's? I checked to see if something like this existed but could not find one. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks~
Technical SEO | | bobbabuoy0 -
Internal Linking
Where is the best information on internal linking. I'm so confused and everything I read says something different. Ahhhh Thanks
Technical SEO | | meardna770