Sitmap Page - HTML and XML
-
Hi there
I have a domain which has a sitemap in html for regular users and a sitemap in xml for the spiders.
I have a warning via seomoz saying that i have too many links on the html version.
What do i do here?
regards
Stef
-
Sorry for late reply guys. Great advice by both of you.
@ Alan, great display on how Page Rank flows. Great illustration which i totally could never explain to clients
-
220 links on a page is absolutely not too many on any level. Many of the highest ranked sites on the internet present more then 220 links.
The particular page is question is simply a sitemap, and the page is being offered to help users navigate the site. The VerizonWireless.com sitemap I shared has 370+ links on it.
The SEOmoz "warning" is a simple feature which will be set off on any internet page with 100+ links. The SEOmoz tool does not care how well those links are presented, whether they are footer links, whether they are on a content page, what the PA of the page is nor any other SEO factor. It is simply a >100 or not warning. As such, it offers very little value.
I am in the process of compiling a list of suggested features for the tool which will help improve it's usefulness. One of the feature recommendations I am proposing is to allow users to adjust the 100 count to any number they want. Each SEO can then choose to use the default 100 number, or use a number more suited to the particular site.
The link Alan shared is a nice explanation of PR flow. It is a nice page for learning PR, but with respect to this topic it over-complicates an otherwise very simple and straight-forward question. The simple point is, the more links on a page the less link juice will flow to each link.
The goals for any web page links should be as follows:
1. Ensure all links are useful for your site. For example, you probably want PR flowing to your most profitable product/service, and to your latest additions.
2. Ensure your links are actually used. Check analytics.
3. If a link is not used or not useful, remove it.
4. Along the lines above, your links should be presented in a very user-friendly manner. You don't want a page to look like a list of nothing but links as users will have a difficult time choosing what they want. An exception would be a sitemap.
With the above in mind, keep as many links as you see fit on the page. If it is 40, that is fine. If there are 250 links on the page, that is fine as well. When you start down a path of chasing numbers such as forcing your content into "500 words" or forcing your links into "100 maximum" you fall into a pit of SEO fallacies. You are not providing the best experience for your users nor SEO.
TL;DR - Provide your links in a manner which is visually appealing, non-spammy and helpful to users. Keep in mind your need to flow PR to important pages such as your money pages. Otherwise remove unnecessary links. Whatever that number of links is, so be it. Don't try to fit your links into a "I must be under 100" or any other number mindset.
-
too many according to google. make of it what you will, does not look like it is for any technial reason anyymore, but obviously there is a limit to how much of page they will crawl.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-many-links-per-page/You see how page rank flows, having a lot of links on your home page works to your advantage. Using numbers from Googles original algo,
Assuming every page starts with 1PR, a page passes %85 of its link juice, so if you have 100 links that’s 0.0085 each. To 100 internal pages, making them 1. 0085each , now they all pass back 85% that’s 0.857225 each, x 100 = 85.7225 back to your home page, now we do the sums all over again and again till they numbers stay static. Now this calculation relies on the internal pages having no other links, so you are unlikely to get figures as good as this, but you get the idea.
See link for better explanation.
http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html check out calculator
Remember don’t stuff up your linking stuckture for the users just for the sake of page rank.I see it as like a golf swing after a lesson, if you try to do what you just learnt too much, you will get all stiff and un-natural, it’s better to swing naturally with what you have learnt in the back of your head.
-
Yes, ignore the warning.
It is possible to present 220 links in a neat, categorized manner. It is also possible to present 100 links as a jumble which is not user friendly.
You shared your presentation is similar to the example I shared which means it is user friendly so ignoring the warning is fine.
-
Nice, i really like that example that you gave. My one is similar and categorized too. Question still remains, do i ignore this warning for this page?
-
I have about 220 links
-
Wel how many do you have.
A quick way of checking is with IE, press F12, go to view menu, then link report
-
Your HTML sitemap is for users. It should present your links in such a manner as to be useful for users who are looking for a page on your site.
An example sitemap for a large site: http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/sitemap.jsp
It does not contain a link to every last page. It is more of a helpful directory. I would suggest you adjust your HTML sitemap in a similar manner. Treat is as a page of links for users.
-
So do you think that i should ignore this warning for the sitemap html page?
-
Well have a look if you can move a few out, it is good to link to as many pages as you can from the home page for the sake of PR flow. but not go over the limit, Some say the limit is 100, some say 150
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
-
Use Internal Search pages as Landing Pages?
Hi all Just a general discussion question about Internal Search pages and using them for SEO. I've been looking to "noindexing / follow" them, but a lot of the Search pages are actually driving significant traffic & revenue. I've over 9,000 search pages indexed that I was going to remove, but after reading this article (https://www.oncrawl.com/technical-seo/seo-internal-search-results/) I was wondering if any of you guys have had success using these pages for SEO, like with using auto-generated content. Or any success stories about using the "noindexing / follow"" too. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Frankie-BTDublin0 -
Client error 404 pages!
I have a number of 404 pages coming up which are left over in Google from the clients previous site. How do I get them out of Google please?
Technical SEO | | PeterC-B0 -
How many pages should my site have?
Right now I think I only have 36. What is a good amount of pages to have? Any ideas on ways to add relevant pages to my site? I was thinking about starting a message board. Also, I have a free tech support chat room, and was thinking about posting the logs somewhere on the site. Does that sound like a good idea? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | eugenecomputergeeks0 -
What can be the cause of my inner pages ranking higher than my home page?
If you do a search for my own company name or products we sell the inner pages rank higher than the homepage and if you do a search for exact content from my home page my home page doesn't show in the results. My homepage shows when you do a site: search so not sure what is causing this.
Technical SEO | | deciph220 -
Yahoo and Bing do not index all pages
Only 20% of our pages are indexed by Bing and Yahoo although we have correctly submitted the sitemap to bing webmaster tools and other search engines index all our content. Do you have any suggestions?
Technical SEO | | AEM130 -
SEOMoz Crawl Diagnostic indicates duplicate page content for home page?
My first SEOMoz Crawl Diagnostic report for my website indicates duplicate page content for my home page. It lists the home page URL Page Title and URL twice. How do I go about diagnosing this? Is the problem related to the following code that is in my .htaccess file? (The purpose of the code was to redirect any non "www" backlink referrals to the "www" version of the domain.) RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^whatever.com [NC]
Technical SEO | | Linesides
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.whatever.com/$1 [L,R=301] Should I get rid of the "http" reference in the second line? Related to this is a notice in the "Crawl Notices Found" -- "301 Permanent redirect" which shows my home page title as "http://whatever.com" and shows the redirect address as http://http://www.whatever.com/ I'm guessing this problem is again related to the redirect code I'm using. Also... The report indicates duplicate content for those links that have different parameters added to the URL i.e. http://www.whatever.com?marker=Blah Blah&markerzoom=13 If I set up a canonical reference for the page, will this fix this? Thank you.0 -
HTML Forms Dilute Pagerank?
Today, we have way too many links on our homepage. About 30 of them are add-to-basket links (regular html links) pointing to a separate application. This application 302 redirects the client back to the referring page. I have two questions: 1. Does the current implementation of our buttons dilute pagerank? Bear in mind the 302 redirect. 2. If the answer to the first question is yes, would transforming the buttons into form buttons change anything to the better? We would still 302 back to the referring page. I know Gbot follows GET forms and even POST forms, but does GBot pass on pagerank to the form URL?
Technical SEO | | TalkInThePark1 -
Is this 404 page indexed?
I have a URL that when searched for shows up in the Google index as the first result but does not have any title or description attached to it. When you click on the link it goes to a 404 page. Is it simply that Google is removing it from the index and is in some sort of transitional phase or could there be another reason.
Technical SEO | | bfinternet0