Site Wide Internal Navigation links
-
Hello all,
All our category pages www.pitchcare.com/shop are linked to from every product page via the sidebar navigation.
Which results in every category page having over 1700 links with the same anchor text.
I have noticed that the category pages dont appear to be ranked when they most definately should be.
For example http://www.pitchcare.com/shop/moss-control/index.html is not ranked for the term "moss control" instead another of our deeper pages is ranked on page 1.
Reading a previous SEO MOZ article
· Excessive Internal Anchor Text Linking / Manipulation Can Trip An Automated Penalty on Google
I recently had my second run-in with a penalty at Google that appears to punish sites for excessive internal linking with "optimized" (or "keyword stuffed anchor text") links. When the links were removed (in both cases, they were found in the footer of the website sitewide), the rankings were restored immediately following Google's next crawl, indicating a fully automated filter (rather than a manual penalty requiring a re-consideration request).Do you think we may have triggered a penalty?
If so what would be the best way to tackle this? Could we add no follows on the product pages?
Cheers
Todd
-
Thanks for your help!
Thats great!
-
Lol,
Sure, so what i showed you now, that you are serving 2 URLs with the same content. this is will be a severe problem when people will link to you to shop/moss-control/ for example. and you are focusing your link building, internet linking to this shop/moss-control/index.html. a Duplicate content filter will be flagged and will loose ranking for both.
the steps needed now, are to 301 redirect your shop/moss-control/ to shop/moss-control/index.html
-
Thanks again.
This is a little over my head now sorry Wissam.
Could you elaborate a little more? (in terms a lamen like me will understand)
Cheers
-
Todd,
your not, its my bad, need to input more into my answers.
so here is a screenshot of an http header response for shop/moss-control/
http://markup.io/v/fvjrfw5a3te5
and this is another screenshot of an http respons for shop/moss-control/index.html
http://markup.io/v/ggt61a170rfw
Both are showing a 200 response, means no redirect. please feel free to ask more
-
Sorry If I'm being really stupid here Wissam!
But when I click both the links you just provided the URLs are identical?
We have a 301 redirect set up so that both go to http://www.pitchcare.com/shop/moss-control/index.html
Again apologies if I'm missing something!
-
Todd,
When you access www.pitchcare.com/shop/moss-control/ it will show you the exact content if you go to www.pitchcare.com/shop/moss-control/index.html.
Google See these two URL as 2 different URLs with same content, hence your content is duplicated
this is an article of how to deal with DC from Google Blog http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/12/deftly-dealing-with-duplicate-content.html
-
Hi Wissam,
Looking at this http://www.pitchcare.com/shop/moss-control is directed to
http://www.pitchcare.com/shop/moss-control/index.html
I cant see any duplicates?
-
Great! Thanks Richard.
They dont use no follows and they are ranking just fine! Must be down to some other factors.
Thanks for your help.
Todd
-
http://www.americanmuscle.com/
American Muscle has many, many links all pointing to category pages and they rank #1-3 on most all Mustang related searches.
I have not counted their links, but I am sure if there was a penalty for excessive internal linking, American Muscle would be a candidate.
-
Thanks for the response. We certainly have duplicate content issues that I'm looking to address but none of the product or sub category pages are affected so I'm convinced it;s down to excessive internal linking.
Open site explorer shows over 1700 internal links pointing to the category pages with the same anchor text.
Unless anyway has any direct advice on accessive linking I'll have to address all of the above and see how it goes,
Thanks anyway.
Todd
-
Thanks again I've freshened the content on the category pages so hopefully that will help also.
-
Todd,
One URL have /index.html and the other URL is without.
and i dnt thing you have been penalized for excessive internatl links.
and I would add more content to accommodate additional links.
-
I would not think that you are being penalized as many large sites would also be. I do not have time this morning to look over your site in detail (sorry), but run it through the Campaign manager and see what errors crop up. As Wissam mentioned, you may have canonical issues that need to be resolved. SEOmoz has many article on canonicalization.
I hope this helped
-
Hi Wissam
Thanks for the advice.
It appears the 2 URLs you gave me that point to the same content are identical? http://www.pitchcare.com/shop/moss-control/index.html
I've created some other internal links pointing to category pages but not within product or sub categories so i'll try that also.
I also plan on deep linking to these category pages but I'm worried that we have been penalised for so many internal links?
If we have been penalised I would imagine these additional external & internal links would make little difference.
Todd
-
I found multiple issues that can help you serve Google with the page you want to rank.
- I think there is an issue of Duplicate content your having with your website.
your page can be accessed by going to http://www.pitchcare.com/shop/moss-control/ and http://www.pitchcare.com/shop/moss-control/index.html so what i would do is either 301 redirect or rel canonical
- In side Moss Control category items and pages try to do internal linking to the main directory.
For example http://www.pitchcare.com/shop/hard-surface-moss-killer/index.html i would link from this page to the main category
- try do to some link building to these Main category pages, (social bookmarking) blogs, articles, etc.
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
-
Over-optimizing Internal Linking: Is this real and, if so, what's the happy medium?
I have heard a lot about having a solid internal linking structure so that Google can easily discover pages and understand your page hierarchies and correlations and equity can be passed. Often, it's mentioned that it's good to have optimized anchor text, but not too optimized. You hear a lot of warnings about how over-optimization can be perceived as spammy: https://neilpatel.com/blog/avoid-over-optimizing/ But you also see posts and news like this saying that the internal link over-optimization warnings are unfounded or outdated:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SearchStan
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-no-internal-linking-overoptimization-penalty-27092.html So what's the tea? Is internal linking overoptimization a myth? If it's true, what's the tipping point? Does it have to be super invasive and keyword stuffy to negatively impact rankings? Or does simple light optimization of internal links on every page trigger this?1 -
Breaking up a site into multiple sites
Hi, I am working on plan to divide up mid-number DA website into multiple sites. So the current site's content will be divided up among these new sites. We can't share anything going forward because each site will be independent. The current homepage will change to just link out to the new sites and have minimal content. I am thinking the websites will take a hit in rankings but I don't know how much and how long the drop will last. I know if you redirect an entire domain to a new domain the impact is negligible but in this case I'm only redirecting parts of a site to a new domain. Say we rank #1 for "blue widget" on the current site. That page is going to be redirected to new site and new domain. How much of a drop can we expect? How hard will it be to rank for other new keywords say "purple widget" that we don't have now? How much link juice can i expect to pass from current website to new websites? Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | timdavis0 -
Realtor site with external links in navigation
I have a client with a realtor site that uses IDX for the listings feed. We have several external links going over to the IDX site for various live custom searches (ie: luxury listings, waterfront listings, etc...). We are getting a Moz spam ranking of 2/7 for both "Large Number of External Links" and "External Links in Navigation". Chances are, these are related. My question is this: (1) Being the score is only 2/7, should I bother with fixing this? (2) If I add a rel="nofollow" to all the site-wide links (in header, footer & menu) will this help? I couldn't find anything definitive in the Q&A search. Looking forward to any insights!!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcallander1 -
Is it Wortwhile to have a HTML site map for a Large Site
We are a large, enterprise site with many pages (some on our CMS and some old pages that exist outside our CMS). Every month we submit various an XML site map. Some pages on our site can no longer be found via following links from one page to another (orphan pages). Some of those pages are important and some not. Is it worth our while to create a HTML site map? Does any one have any recent stats or blog posts to share, showing how a HTML site map may have benefited a large site. Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CeeC-Blogger0 -
Does the number of links on a page metric include repeated links?
Just wondering if the number of links on the page metric includes links that are repeated? So, if I had 100 links to one page would this count as 100 or 1 link?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cornwall
If it's the former does this mean more links to one page adds weight? Thanks0 -
One Way Links vs Two Way Links
Hi, Was speaking to a client today and got asked how damaging two way links are. i.e. domaina.com links to domainb.com and domainb.com links back to domaina.com. I need a nice simple layman's explanation of if/how damaging they are compared to one way links. And please don't answer with you lose link juice as I have a job explaining link juice.... I am explaining things to a non techie! Thank you!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
Removed Site-wide links
Hi there, I have recently removed quite a lot of site-wide links leaving the only link on homepage's of some websites, since doing this I have seen a dramatic drop on my keywords, going from position 2-3 to nowhere. Has anyone else experienced anything like this, should I expect to see a return on these keywords? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Link Request Email on Site`s Link Pages
Hello I have assembled a list of web-sites that have "Links" section that has a list of persons` favorite tools. Those pages have a link to my competitor. I know my tool is just as good if not better and want to request a link. I`m thinking of sending an email asking for a link and offering a small amount of money for it. Questions: A) How much should I offer? Should I offer anything at all B) Is there an email style that someone can suggest that has been tested and proven to work for this type of situtation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hellopotap0