What's the max number of links you should ever have on a page?
-
Our homepage has a few hundred links and our index pages(pages that link to our spintext pages) have about 900 links on them with no content. Our SEO guy said we have to keep the links under 1000 but I wanted to see what you guys think.
-
I think in Danny Dover's book he suggests no more than 150.
-
"Link Juice" passes from one page to another based on the number of links on that page. Here's what the SEOmoz basic guide to SEO says about it;
Number of Links on a Page
According to the original PageRank formula, the value that a link passes is diluted by the presence of other links on a page. Thus, getting linked-to by a page with few links is better than being linked-to by the same page with many links on it (all other things being equal). The degree to which this is relevant is unknowable (and in our testing, it appears to be important, but not overwhelmingly so), but it's certainly something to be aware of as you conduct link acquisition.
So the more links you have on a page, the less value each link passes.
The SEOmoz optimization report says to avoid "Excessive" internal and external links, and I think that number is somewhere between 100 and 150.
I don't think that you should get to a "maximum" number of links. Instead you should aggressively reduce the number of links to find the minimum. See also: Link Sculpting
-
900 links and no content, and something called "spintext". This sets off a few warning bells to me that the site doesn't seem to be for users as much as the search engines. Are you able to drop a link to the site? If so, we could give a little more opinion. It does seem to be a bit high for links.
-
I don't think there is any "good" rule of thumb out there, as it really depends on your website and the amount of authority you have, but I would say that your SEO guy is certainly right in that you should try to cut back on the amount of links you have. I don't know what your website is, but I would generally say that anywhere close to 1000 is probably too much. Mathematically speaking, the more links you have on any given page, the more the "link juice" is going to be divided up. For this reason, it makes sense to focus internal links on your most important pages, particularly if they are coming from one of your strongest pages, like your home page.
SEOmoz's Pro tool uses 100 links as their standard. Any pages with more than 100 links get flagged. In Danny Dover's book, Search Engine Optimization Secrets, I believe he cites his number as 150.
Dr. Pete wrote a tremendous post on this topic earlier this year which is certainly worth a read.
The rule of thumb I would use: Are these links good for the user? Is this the optimal way to offer easy navigation to my visitors? Can this be done easier, cleaner, or more efficiently?
At the end of the day, if your page is authoritative enough, something like too many links isn't going to pose a problem. But if they're affecting user experience, or if they're weakening your SEO efforts, than they can certainly hold you back.
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
-
Why are only PDFs on my client's site being indexed, and not actual pages?
My client has recently built a new site (we did not build this), which is a subdomain of their main site. The new site is: https://addstore.itelligencegroup.com/uk/en/. (Their main domain is: http://itelligencegroup.com/uk/) This new Addstore site has recently gone live (in the past week or so) and so far, Google appears to have indexed 56 pdf files that are on the site, but it hasn't indexed any of the actual web pages yet. I can't figure out why though. I've checked the robots.txt file for the site which appears to be fine: https://addstore.itelligencegroup.com/robots.txt. Does anyone have any ideas about this?
Technical SEO | | mfrgolfgti0 -
Can you regain any SERPs / link juice of links that have 404'd?
We have a client whose 301 redirects disappeared and have been gone for about 6 months now. We are going to be putting the 301 redirects back in place. Will we be able to regain any of the previous SERPs or link juice from old links or is all lost? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | SavvyPanda0 -
Max Number of 301 Redirections?
Hi, We currently made a re-design of a website and we changed all our urls to make them shorter. I made more than 300 permanent redirections but plenty more are needed since WMT is showing some more 404s from old urls that I hadn't seen because they were dynamic. The question is, please, is there a limit? I think we have more than 600 already. We don't want to create a php commando to redirect all the old ones to our home, we are redirecting them to their correspondent url. By the way, Im doing them with the 301 method in .htaccess. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | Tintanus0 -
Should I consider webmaster tools links and linked pages ratio to remove unnatural links?
I don't know this is a suitable place for post this question. Anyway I have done it. According to the Google webmaster tools, Links to your site page. My blog has considerable amount of links, from linked pages (from certain domain names). For an instance please refer following screenshot. When I am removing unnatural links, should I consider these, links from linked pages ratio? Almost all of these sites are social bookmarking sites. When I publish a new bookmark on those sites, they automatically add a homepage link. As a result of that, I got a huge number of home page links from linked pages. What is your recommendation? Thanks! webmaster.png web_master_tools.png
Technical SEO | | Godad0 -
New EMD update effected my mom's legit author page? From page 1 in SERP to nowhere for her name
I think my mom's site, MargaretTerry.com was hit by this update for her name "Margaret Terry". Went from bouncing around the first page on google.com and .ca all the time to nowhere on the index. The results are now very strange, a mix of Youtube, linked in, and small book stores that she has done events at recently to promote her first book. I was checking after some of my SEO buddys were freaking out about their EMD's getting hit on Sunday. She is an aspiring author with a book coming out this month. There is obviously no ads or spam content on the site... I have never done SEO for it either except a bit of on page I guess. It sucks that people might be grabbing her book soon and when they Google her name nothing shows up. This couldn't have really happened at a worse time. Not to mention the hours spent building the site to her liking, free of charge of course 🙂 Is there anyone I can contact there to help me out? Shouldn't and EMD that is someones name still rank when you search their name?
Technical SEO | | Operatic0 -
Does HTTPS Affect Inbound Link Numbers?
Hi All, I'm dealing with an internal IT staff that is trying to change an entire site to run on HTTPS instead of HTTP. The way they want things configured, all links pointing to HTTP URLs would redirect to the HTTPS. I'm assuming this would adversely affect page rank/domain authority, etc... am I right there? Thanks, Ben
Technical SEO | | Ben_Alvord0 -
Linking from and to pages
My website, www.kamperen-bij-de-boer.com, tells people what campingssites can be found in The Netherlands for recreational purposes. In order for a campingsite to be mentioned on our website we ask them to place a link to our website (either using a text link or image link) and then we make a page for that campsite on our website with in the end a link to ther website, e.g. http://www.kamperen-bij-de-boer.com/Minicamping-In-t-Oldambt.html -> they in return link back to us. Since this comes natural will this or won't this be penalized by Google and so on for linkfarming. At this moment we have about 600 camping sites on our website alone linking to us (not all of them) and we are linking to them. Since this can be explained as link trading which is not as good for your ranking as one-way-linking what should be wise? Should i include a nofollow? I already have many links from other sites linking to mine without having to link back, is there anything else i can do with linking to ensure better ranking?
Technical SEO | | JarnoNijzing0 -
What is the criteria for link "Paged from Australia"
When i enter a keyword in google.com.au, and click on a link "Pages from australia" ( in the middle left ), i expect to australian sites only. But there are sites with .com extension. Then what is the meaning of link "Pages from australia". What does it signify ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050