Internal links to low value pages
-
Hi,
We're doing a big content update on our product pages and I'm looking for some advice about our internal linking.
In a nutshell, the current design we're using links out from every product page (i.e. plants) to a set of accessory pages (i.e. things to help you plant the plants). The screenshot shows how this works.
The accessories we sell are a very small part of our business and don't attract significant or valuable search traffic. It's the plant pages that pull in the visits and make the money.
The reason for all these links to accessory pages is for usabilty & to reduce the volume of support calls about accessories (we get a lot of those).So my concern is that by linking out to these relatively low value accessory pages from all of our plant product pages, we will be spilling link juice from all our important pages to a small set of unimportant ones.
Should I be concerned about this and if so, what should I do differently?
I have considered:
- Making an intermediary page, listing the relevant accessories, so that each product page links to one intermediary page, which then links to all the accessories.
- Using nofollow on the accessory page links - there is so much info out there about this, much of it conflicting, that I just don't know if that's a good or bad idea.
- Using some kind of java-based pop-up box to list the accessory links that will hide the links from spiders.
- Linking back from the accessory pages to the relevant product sub-category pages to loop the flow of link juice.
All ideas welcome
-
Thanks Josh,
In the main we rank very well for medium length & long tail searches about our plants, which made me confident about doing all this internal linking in the first place. It wasn't until the die was cast that I lost my nerve.
It's so hard to track rankings across so many products & keyphrase variations, especially when we add in the variables of ongoing link building & the fresh chunks of content that we added to almost all of the updated product pages when we put in these new internal links. We're tracking samples of the most valuable ones in SEOmoz campaigns and nothing dramatic has changed.
We have no accurate means of measuring whether or not these links have affected support calls & email traffic, which isn't much help! We knew this beforehand, but our reasoning was basically "how could it hurt?".
I suppose what I'm really asking for is an example of another site that has dealt with this particular issue, i.e. found a way to use (almost) site-wide links to necessary but commercially unimportant pages without draining the link juice of its important pages.
-
Hey edeb,
This is one of those cases where you really have to evaluate what is going to work best for your bottom line. Remember that SEO is a means to achieve a goal.
I would start by finding out where you are. Do the plant pages rank well enough? If so, maybe you don't need to do anything, and your site can handle the minor leaks in juice (but hey, keep building links). If not, then yeah I would start looking at solutions to this.
You mention that you placed those products on the main pages to reduce call volume. I know how costly that is so I feel you there. But has it actually helped? And if so, how much? Is it worth the loss in rankings for those main pages?
If you aren't saving the cost you thought you would, or it's not enough to risk the rankings for those pages then I would get em off there (and look for more solutions to reducing that call volume. Man, that's so expensive).
If your major pages are ranking nicely, and the reduction in call volume has been a major relief, son't do anything. Well, call you competitors and brag, but nothing else on this front.
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
-
Does Google index internal anchors as separate pages?
Hi, Back in September, I added a function that sets an anchor on each subheading (h[2-6]) and creates a Table of content that links to each of those anchors. These anchors did show up in the SERPs as JumpTo Links. Fine. Back then I also changed the canonicals to a slightly different structur and meanwhile there was some massive increase in the number of indexed pages - WAY over the top - which has since been fixed by removing (410) a complete section of the site. However ... there are still ~34.000 pages indexed to what really are more like 4.000 plus (all properly canonicalised). Naturally I am wondering, what google thinks it is indexing. The number is just way of and quite inexplainable. So I was wondering: Does Google save JumpTo links as unique pages? Also, does anybody know any method of actually getting all the pages in the google index? (Not actually existing sites via Screaming Frog etc, but actual pages in the index - all methods I found sadly do not work.) Finally: Does somebody have any other explanation for the incongruency in indexed vs. actual pages? Thanks for your replies! Nico
Technical SEO | | netzkern_AG0 -
Can you noindex a page, but still index an image on that page?
If a blog is centered around visual images, and we have specific pages with high quality content that we plan to index and drive our traffic, but we have many pages with our images...what is the best way to go about getting these images indexed? We want to noindex all the pages with just images because they are thin content... Can you noindex,follow a page, but still index the images on that page? Please explain how to go about this concept.....
Technical SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com0 -
Google webmaster tool doestn allow me to send 'URL and all linked pages"
Hello! I made a lot of optimization changes in my site ( seo urls, and a lot more ) , I always use Google Webmaster tools, fetch as Google Bot to refresh my site but now it doesnt allow me to 'Send URL and all linked pages' check the attachment Thank you
Technical SEO | | matiw0 -
Off-page SEO and on-page SEO improvements
I would like to know what off-page SEO and on-page SEO improvements can be made to one of our client websites http://www.nd-center.com Best regards,
Technical SEO | | fkdpl2420 -
Nofollow link passing link juice
Can a link which is nofollwed pass link juice ? Please see the discussion at - http://www.seomoz.org/q/if-multiple-links-on-a-page-point-to-the-same-url-and-one-of-them-is-no-followed-does-that-impact-the-one-that-isn-t
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Link to overall brand pages
On our website we have two ways to get in a brand environment. We have general brand pages and brand pages divided by category. At this moment the category brand pages get the most SEO value, because we have a link on our homepage to these pages (via the mega dropdown). The problem is that we would like to assign the SEO value to the general brand pages (with all the articles) instead of the category brand pages (with only articles within a category). We prefer to optimize the general brand page without a link to this page on the homepage for now. for example; Those two pages have the most SEO value
Technical SEO | | eCommerceSEO
www.debijenkorf.nl/herenmode/diesel
www.debijenkorf.nl/damesmode/diesel but we would like to assign value to;
www.debijenkorf.nl/diesel Do you have a solution for this problem? Thank you in advance! Kind regards,0 -
Does page speed affect what pages are in the index?
We have around 1.3m total pages, Google currently crawls on average 87k a day and our average page load is 1.7 seconds. Out of those 1.3m pages(1.2m being "spun up") google has only indexed around 368k and our SEO person is telling us that if we speed up the pages they will crawl the pages more and thus will index more of them. I personally don't believe this. At 87k pages a day Google has crawled our entire site in 2 weeks so they should have all of our pages in their DB by now and I think they are not index because they are poorly generated pages and it has nothing to do with the speed of the pages. Am I correct? Would speeding up the pages make Google crawl them faster and thus get more pages indexed?
Technical SEO | | upper2bits0 -
What Are The Page Linking Options?
Okay, so I'm working with a site that has pretty good domain authority, but the interior pages are not well linked or optimized. So, it ranks for some terms, but everything goes to the home page. So, I'd like to increase the authority of the interior pages. The client is not wild about spreading targeted juice via something like a footer. They also don't like a "Popular Searches" style link list. The objection is that it's not attractive. They currently use cute euphemisms as the linking text, so like "cool stuff" instead of "sheepskin seat covers." In that made up example, they'd like to rank for the latter, but insist on using the former. What about a slide show with alt text/links? Would that increase the authority of those pages in a term-targeted kinda way? Are there other options? Does it matter how prominent those links are, like footers not as good as something higher up the page? They currently use a pull-down kind of thing that still results in some pages having no authority. Do bots use that equally well? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | 945010