What's the best strategy for reducing the number of links on a blog post?
-
I'd like to optimize my blog better for search. The first reccomendation I got from my SEOMoz Pro Campaign Crawl was that I needed to reduce the number of links per page on my site. I have lots of links from navigational items in the sidebar that people do click on. I'd really like to keep some or all of the tags and categories I list. Comments are another issue. Most of our posts get about 10 comments. However, our best posts get 50-100 comments. Those comments create a lot of links.
I was planning on attempting to reduce the number of links using javascript but I guess Google understands javascript now. I may still do this b/c our pages are huge and some progressive rendering would likely help the user experience.
Can you use javascript (ajax or otherwise) to limit the number of links on your page in a way that helps your SEO efforts? Any specific suggestions for reducing links that come from comments and navigational items?
How much will reducing the number of links on a given page help with SEO? Any simple way to estimate or quantify this without diving in?
Thanks in advance!
-
Your domain strength is pretty high, so on your home page and top pages, those navigational links are going to be fine, but you could nofollow the bulk of them on the individual blog pages.
You already have the tweet and facebook like buttons that are getting use, but you might be able to add some easy to copy & paste code, similar to a badge, to try and boost inbound links (http://www.seomoz.org/dp/badges). Also, since you have so much content you could try getting a Polyvore-like feature added to your site that helps people make a collage from the different wedding details they like. (http://www.polyvore.com/).
I didn't dig too deeply so these are just off-the-cuff examples, but hopefully enough to spark some ideas for you.
-
Anyone have any thoughts about whether or not I should attempt to reduce the number of links in the sidebar via javascript? I've got 160 navigational links. Should I try to load these in via Javascript? How would Google react to that?
-
Hey Ryan, thanks for taking a look. nofollowing the comment links is a good idea!
I'm under the assumption the assumption that nofollow links are still hurting my SEO efforts do to how Google passes page rank through links.
Thanks for the tips on looking at other blogs and seeing how they use nofollow. Again, I guess the big guestion is should I be reducing the number of links on my site (including the number of nofollow links).
Can you give a more specific example of "hooks for people to link back to"?
-
Hi Tait. I went through one of the blog posts with 20+ comments and saw that most of the links via user names are pretty wedding relevant--wedding photographers, profiles back to your own site, some broken links--plus they're already nofollowed already. It'd be a good idea to apply nofollow to the individual comment links as well below the user name.
If you have the SEOmoz toolbar you can turn on "Show Nofollows" here and see all the different links the 'moz is disregarding. All the "Browse Category" links at left are nofollowed, the section tags, and the function links (Add Image or Video URLs...) I think you could take a similar tack with your blog and apply any incoming link juice to a few select links that are the focus of that blog post. That way you're leaving the option open for people to be social via your blog and provide links for people to click, but the technical focus is around your target keywords.
To get more insight on where you could apply nofollows, just leave the "Show Nofollows" highlighter on in the tool bar and surf the web for a bit: competitors, blogs that would likely be in a competitive niche, etc. You should be able to get a pretty good idea fairly quickly from that exercise.
Last, coming up with hooks for people to link back in to individual blog posts would be handy as any juice coming in would then be redistributed to your most targeted links.
-
That seems like a pretty practical solution. Some people won't stop by any more but those are the people who are just trying to promote themselves. I wonder if it might actually increase comments b/c now the form will be even shorter and simpler to fill out.
-
It sounds like you are getting good contributions and are doing a proper job of blocking the weasels.
What do you think of eliminating the "website" field of the comment form? I would eliminate it if it was on my site.
-
Thanks EGOL. To be clear, we remove most comments with links embedded in the text (unless they are relevant). However the "website" field of the comment form creates a nofollow link to a site if filled in.
I don't want to remove comments. People really do contribute in our comments section. Having comments show people stopping by our blog that we have a nice little community of readers. While there is some abuse we work to remove spammy comments and blacklist domains that continue to spam us.
-
Those comments create a lot of links"
There is what I would ATTACK. A lot of those links are placed there by people who probably don't give a rat's behind about your content - they are simply there to drop a link on you. Consider the content of these comments and ask if they are honest contributors.
I would disable links in comments or moderate them out.
"How much will reducing the number of links on a given page help with SEO?"
I believe that relevant links are helpful for SEO. However, I also believe that if you have a blog about knitting and it is getting links dropped on it to men's health products, hotels in Turkey and online casinos, then you better pray that Google doesn't drop your rankings.
I have a blog and used to allow comments. I turned them off because even with a plug-in to block spam comments a lot of undesired comments were getting in. Some comments came from people who are in my industry but were trying to use my blog as a signpost for their business. So, I cut the comments and now run a bully pulpit. Less work for me and less odor on the blog.
I was sad to lose comments from a few genuine contributors... but this is a better balance for me.
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
-
Should I use 'Click here' as an inbound link for my cornerstone content?
Hello Should I use 'Click here' as an inbound link for my cornerstone content? Example: For a full selection of our Facebook Event Attendee packages, please click here. OR Example: Please click the following link for a selection of our Facebook Event Attendee packages. This is my product page to help you better understand the context: LikeChimp
On-Page Optimization | | xdunningx0 -
Google search: 'define:____'
See: http://screencast.com/t/oFSzIt5rRm Thrilled that Google is pulling our content over wikipedia (in this instance). Wondering how we can assure more success like this. Mike Corso
On-Page Optimization | | Mike_c
Gartner.com1 -
Transfer Blog From External Domain
Hi All I am in stages of transferring a blog. We currently have partial manual penalty for unnatural links, and we received sample links of our own blog, which happened to be originally setup on another domain. e.g. example.co.uk and the blogs hosted on exampleblog.co.uk - the only way these were linked were through anchor text in each and every blog - so it's clear why this has been picked up. We are now going to transfer these across to our actual domain. Around 60% of the blogs had no meat, so we have pruned through these. What is the best solution; Redirecting ONLY the good blogs via 301 Redirect and 404 pages with no meat OR Redirecting ONLY the good blogs via 301 Redirect the others to Example.co.uk/Blogs Thanks Tom
On-Page Optimization | | TomPryor830 -
Sold Products appear as duplicate pages 'Page Not Found' ???
Hi there, I'm down to just 6 duplicate page warnings but I'm not sure how to deal with this one: Information Page Not Found! http://www.vintageheirloom.com/index.php?route=information/information&information_id=6 My Ecommerce shopping site products are unique, 1 of a kind. So once one product has sold and been delivered we take the product off our website, hence the Information Page Not Found! As I understand when search engines re-index these warnings will drop off but new sold products would replace them. So redirecting seems like hard work and never ending. Is it ok to ignore these warnings? Thanks Mozzers..
On-Page Optimization | | well-its-1-louder0 -
Should I buy an established domain that has lost it's high PR due to being offline for several months?
I'm considering purchasing a domain that has sat idle for several months. It was a company's domain that they have owned since the mid1990's but they went out of business. Previously, it had a PR 5 but has since lost it's PR as it has sat 'inactive' with a 'server not found' warning for the past several months. That being said, is there any point in buying the domain (for SEO purposes)? Is there any recourse with Google to try and re-establish the site's credibility or would I be starting over from scratch?
On-Page Optimization | | martybuch230 -
Are blog pages hurting rankings?
Let me begin by saying that I have a Wordpress site with a customized theme. When I view my webpage's crawl diagnostics, it keeps showing a lot of Warnings. There are 89 pages with Too Many On-Page Links and 90 Pages with a missing meta-description tag. The problem is that the pages are listed as follows for both errors: Blog Page 10 Blog Page 11 Blog Page 12 Etc. There are no other pages, just the blog pages (which include about 7 posts/page). How do I eliminate the too many links without deleting them from individual blog posts, and how do I add meta-description tags to blog pages without duplicating the tag for /blog? Thanks! | | | | |
On-Page Optimization | | DuBois
| | |
|
|
| | | |
|
| | | | |
| |0 -
Limiting On Page Links
Right now, we have about 160 or so links on the home page. It's been recommended that we keep it to under 100, though that's not as big of a deal as it once was. Is it helpful to make a bunch of those links "nofollow" in order to preserve link juice? Is it going to make a difference, or be at all helpful? I assume it won't be harmful, especially as a bunch of them are to the same page but on different sections of the page. Would live your advice and thoughts! Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | DeliaAssociates0 -
On-Page SEO Priorities: Title's, Anchor Text or Meta data?
**Any suggestions for prioritized on-page SEO work? Relative weights of importance? ** **What is most important from highest to lowest? ** MetaTag Descriptions? Titles? Anchor Text? Alt Text - for images? Anything else? We might not be able to do everything at once like I desire ......but I do feel we should at least get the ball moving in the right direction. I am looking for ideas or suggestions on what to prioritize for a little bit of on-page SEO work on our website. I personally feel that SEO is pretty important but I am a novice. I have been reading this site the past week and want to convince my webpage guy that on-page SEO is important and that we should at least do a few things and gradually get the work done. Rightfully so our #1 priority is to redesign our landing pages (they are bad) . I also think we should do a little On-Page work concurently. (Lack of on-page SEO is also preventiing me from successfully submitting and being accepted by Dmoz, Yahoo, BOW etc) He is mainly a back engine guy and does a very good job with that. If I were to TELL him to do a few prioritized on-page SEO things what would you suggest? He did do something on the home page at my suggestion but that is all to this point. We have over 400 pages indexed with very little on-page SEO on them. Thank you, UtahTiger
On-Page Optimization | | Boodreaux0