Site Wide Internal Navigation links

[toddyC]

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

[toddyC]

Thanks for your help!

Thats great!

[wissamdandan]

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

[toddyC]

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

[wissamdandan]

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

[toddyC]

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!

[wissamdandan]

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

[toddyC]

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?

[toddyC]

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

[Getz.pro]

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.

[toddyC]

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

[toddyC]

Thanks again I've freshened the content on the category pages so hopefully that will help also.

[wissamdandan]

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.

[Getz.pro]

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

[toddyC]

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

[wissamdandan]

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.