External Links on a Front Page
-
Does anyone have any links to information about external links on a front page ?
I am advising a client that this is not the best idea and that they could be put in a different place but can't find any proof of this.
-
Well, another concern if they're completely unrelated links is that they may look like paid links which you could even be penalised for.
-
Thanks Barry, this is exactly what I was looking for and it does make sense. I decided not to no follow them as I didn't want decay and I considered the point about links in the same niche, however these arent related to what the site is about.
Thanks again.
-
Thank you, but never blindly trust anyone on here
Make sure what I'm saying makes sense! 
I wouldn't necessarily say it was bad, but I see your concern.
Your homepage is (almost) always going to be the strongest page on your site. Each link added dilutes the value of the other links on the page.
While this post deals with nofollowing links, it highlights how link juice is passed by linking - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-maybe-changes-how-the-pagerank-algorithm-handles-nofollow
Effectively you'd be giving away some of the most powerful links you can control to other people, presumably in the same sector. So for that reason, if you have to link to them and can do so elsewhere then do that instead.
This the sort of thing you were looking for?
-
Hi Barry, glad to see you responding to another one of my questions. I know I am in safe hands !
Preserving link juice yes, I am not sure if my thinking on this matter is now a bit dated, but surely wanting 5 external links on a front page cannot be good.
-
That's quite a vague issue
What are your concerns about having external links on the homepage? Preserving link juice?
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
-
Spam links - which link is most damaging to my rankings.
I have just started using Open Site Explorer and discovered a lot of spam links to my website.
Technical SEO | | A.Ronny
(I have mostly ranked on page for many years one but in the last two weeks ranking have dropped to page two)
The links have Anchor Text such as Scam - Dishonest - Drugs. Most of the of the links are "nofollow".
Will links with "nofollow" affect my ranking and if so which of the links should i priorities to remove?
Do I look at Link Equity - Domain Authority - Page Authority or other criteria? Many thanks
Ronny0 -
Is it bad for seo to have a large number of external links opening in modal windows?
I've got a job board that pulls in feeds from various job sites and recruiters. Rather than losing visitors exiting my site, I thought I was being clever by opening all external links in modal windows, so the user can 'click to close' and effectively stay on my site. I'm now starting to think this may potentially have been a bad move for SEO. Is there any evidence to suggest this? Simon
Technical SEO | | simmo2350 -
Low page impressions
Hey there MOZ Geniuses; While checking my webmaster data I noticed that almost all my Google impressions are generated by the home page, most other content pages are showing virtually no impression data <50 (the home page is showing around 1500 - a couple of the pages are in the 150-200 range). the site has been up for about 8 months now. Traffic on average is about 500 visitors, but I'm seeing very little entry other then the home page. Checking the number Sitemap section 27 of 30 are index Webmaster tools are not reporting errors Webmaster keyword impressions are also extremely low 164 keywords with the highest impression count of 79 and dropping from there. MOZ is show very few minor issues although it says that it crawled 10k pages? -- we only have 30 or so. The answer seems obvious, Google is not showing my content ... the question is why and what steps can I take to analyze this? Could there be a possibility of some type of penalty? I welcome all your suggestions: The site is www.calibersi.com
Technical SEO | | VanadiumInteractive0 -
No confirmation page on Google's Disavow links tool?
I've been going through and doing some spring cleaning on some spammy links to my site. I used Google's Disavow links tool, but after I submit my text file, nothing happens. Should I be getting some sort of confirmation page? After I upload my file, I don't get any notifications telling me Google has received my file or anything like that. It just takes me back to this page: http://cl.ly/image/0S320q46321R/Image 2013-04-26 at 11.15.25 AM.png Am I doing something wrong or is this what everyone else is seeing too?
Technical SEO | | shawn810 -
Page Indexing increase when I request Google Site Link demote
Hi there, Has anyone seen a page crawling increase in Google Web Master Tools when they have requested a site link demotion? I did this around the 23rd of March, the next day I started to see page crawling rise and rise and report a very visible spike in activity and to this day is still relatively high. From memory I have asked about this in SEOMOZ Q&A a couple of years ago in and was told that page crawl activity is a good thing - ok fine, no argument. However at the nearly in the same period I have noticed that my primary keyword rank for my home page has dropped away to something in the region of 4th page on Google US and since March has stayed there. However the exact same query in Google UK (Using SEOMOZ Rank Checker for this) has remained the same position (around 11th) - it has barely moved. I decided to request an undemote on GWT for this page link and the page crawl started to drop but not to the level before March 23rd. However the rank situation for this keyword term has not changed, the content on our website has not changed but something has come adrift with our US ranks. Using Open Site Explorer not one competitor listed has a higher domain authority than our site, page authority, domain links you name it but they sit there in first page. Sorry the above is a little bit of frustration, this question is not impulsive I have sat for weeks analyzing causes and effects but cannot see why this disparity is happening between the 2 country ranks when it has never happened for this length of time before. Ironically we are still number one in the United States for a keyword phrase which I moved away from over a month ago and do not refer to this phrase at all on our index page!! Bizarre. Granted, site link demotion may have no correlation to the KW ranking impact but looking at activities carried out on the site and timing of the page crawling. This is the only sizable factor I can identify that could be the cause. Oh! and the SEOMOZ 'On-Page Optimization Tool' reports that the home page gets an 'A' for this KW term. I have however this week commented out the canonical tag for the moment in the index page header to see if this has any effect. Why? Because as this was another (if not minor) change I employed to get the site to an 'A' credit with the tool. Any ideas, help appreciated as to what could be causing the rank differences. One final note the North American ranks initially were high, circa 11-12th but then consequently dropped away to 4th page but not the UK rankings, they witnessed no impact. Sorry one final thing, the rank in the US is my statistical outlier, using Google Analytics I have an average rank position of about 3 across all countries where our company appears for this term. Include the US and it pushes the average to 8/9th. Thanks David
Technical SEO | | David-E-Carey0 -
Link juice and max number of links clarification
I understand roughly that "Link Juice" is passed by dividing PR by the number of links on a page. I also understand the juice available is reduced by some portion on each iteration. 50 PR page 10 links on page 5 * .9 = 4.5 PR goes to each link. Correct? If so and knowing Google stops counting links somewhere around 100, how would it impact the flow to have over 100 links? IE 50 PR page 150 links on the page .33 *.9 = .29PR to each link BUT only for 100 of them. After that, the juice is just lost? Also, I assume Google, to the best of its ability, organizes the links in order of importance such that content links are counted before footer links etc.
Technical SEO | | sprynewmedia0 -
How not to lose link juice when linking to thousands of PDF guides?
Hi All, I run an e-commerce website with thousands of products.
Technical SEO | | BeytzNet
In each product page I have a link to a PDF guide of that product. Currently we link to it with a "nofollow" <a href="">tag.</a> <a href="">Should we change it to window.open in order not to lose link juice? Thanks</a>0 -
How to find links to 404 pages?
I know that I used to be able to do this, but I can't seem to remember. One of the sites I am working on has had a lot of pages moving around lately. I am sure some links got lost in the fray that I would like to recover, what is the easiest way to see links going to a domain that are pointing to 404 pages?
Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider0
