Too Many On-Page Links

[bmmedia]

Hi All,

New to SEOMoz, so thanks in advance for any answers! Looking at our Crawl Diagnostics and "Too Many On-Page Links" is first on the list.

The site was build with the intention of users being able to quickly get to where they want to go with drop down menus (sub nav), so we built the navigation using bullet points/css.

Yes, agreed there are too many links on each page from our navigation, main nav cats are 4 with sub nav about 40, but what is the best way to resolve the problem other then removing most of the links (from the sub nav drop down)?

Could we just use the attribute rel=nofollow for the sub nav links?

TIA

[bmmedia]

Yep, so the only way to conserve is to cut back on the navigation from what I've gotten so far.

[KeriMorgret]

Nofollow doesn't conserve any juice anymore, any juice just evaporates through a nofollow. So if you have five links and four are nofollow, you don't get 100% of juice going through the one link, you still only have 20%. Does that help?

[bmmedia]

Hi Keri,

Great post..thanks! I now very much understand the limit and what it meant and what it means today.

I guess I should now re-phrase my question to something along the lines of; for SEO purposes would it be better to leave the sub nav links as is or use something like rel=nofollow to conserve the flow of "juice"..and what is the best practice for doing this?

[bmmedia]

Hi Shane,

I totally agree with you and that is what most SE's state in their best practices , but wanted to know for the sake of tightening up the "juice". Thanks!

[KeriMorgret]

For more background on how many links is too many, check out this post from earlier this year by Dr. Pete. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-many-links-is-too-many

[Jinx14678]

So I am not totally sold that "Too Many on Page links" is a universal blanket metric.

What I mean specifically is....

If the links are useful, and benefit the user experience (navigability) I think that "Too Many on Page Links" does not necessarily apply.

I really in my opinion think this is mostly for Link farms, content farms ect...

If the links are necessary, relevant and help the user find what they need....

Then i am not sure it is a problem.

It would be good to get others opinions on putting rel=nofollow for the sub nav links, but personally I do not think this is a good idea, but others may have a different opinion as traditionally this would help you conserve "juice" so i think it could help, but have never tested.