Limiting On Page Links
-
Right now, we have about 160 or so links on the home page. It's been recommended that we keep it to under 100, though that's not as big of a deal as it once was.
Is it helpful to make a bunch of those links "nofollow" in order to preserve link juice? Is it going to make a difference, or be at all helpful? I assume it won't be harmful, especially as a bunch of them are to the same page but on different sections of the page.
Would live your advice and thoughts! Thanks!
-
Brent and Syed are correct - nofollow no longer preserves link-juice. As for the 100-links "rule", it's really just a guideline. I discuss it in depth here:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-many-links-is-too-many
It's really a balancing act - the more links you have, the less love each link gets. It's not just SEOs - it's true for visitors, too (as Ryan pointed out). More options isn't always a good thing.
The trick is that the balance really depends a lot on the site. I've seen sites with 160 links that were well-designed with ample authority to make that work. I've seen others with 80 links where it was a complete mess.
It's also important to note that links to the same Page B on any Page A are discounted by Google - so, if you have a link in the navigation and then a link to that same page in the content and footer, the 2nd and 3rd links are basically ignored. We still count them as part of the 100, but Google doesn't in most cases. It's a little tricky, since Google probably views navigation links differently from contextual (in-page) links, but the rule still generally holds. Only one link to any Page B from Page A is going to get counted.
-
Thanks everyone. I really appreciate all your help!
-
Making links 'nofollow' to preserve link juice is a thing of the past. As of now, the "link juice" that you think you 'saved' just vanishes into thin air. Meaning, if you do use 'Nofollow' on links, you won't be saving it and passing it on to others.
100 links on page is just a broad suggestion for most websites. Our website have 180 links on homepage and we rank pretty well.
-
Even if you make the links nofollow, you will still lose link juice.
Just focus on putting your best links towards the top.
Here is a great post explaining why you still will lose link juice.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-maybe-changes-how-the-pagerank-algorithm-handles-nofollow
-
That will be helpful to preserve your link juice, but it won't make the site easier to navigate for your users. Ideally you want a "flat" and "wide" site architecture. Inbound.org recently had an article on this exact topic.
I'm not sure no-following those duplicate links is going to do a whole lot, other than spread your "link juice" more evenly around your site. For example, if 60 of your 160 links are duplicated (meaning theres another link going to a different anchor on the same URL), that means those 60 pages are getting hosed with link juice twice, and your other 40 pages with only 1 link will get half as much of it. If each URL has only 1 followed link from the homepage, then your homepages link juice will flow more or less evenly across all the pages.
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
-
On-page SEO
This is a question for the organic SEO experts, once you added the main keyword that you want to rank for in the homepage title, meta title plus meta description, perhaps once or twice in the text on the homepage. How often do you then write it in the content marketing, say blog posts, we want to rank higher on Google for "SEO agencies Cardiff" however if you mention this in the blog posts too much say once a week, this could lead to over optimisation issues?
On-Page Optimization | | sarahwalsh1 -
To create extra pages, or not to create extra pages?
I'm responsible for a site where we cater for all kinds of medical & legal problems. I recently conducted keyword research that shows a lot of questions being 'asked' in relation to the conditions we cater for. Naturally, I want to create content to answer these questions. We have a page for 'Cancer compensation' - the 'possible content' that answers questions won't necessarily help someone claiming compensation for cancer mistreatment, BUT someone who asks a question relating to cancer, answered in the 'possible content' may find the 'cancer compensation' page useful. SO! Do I: Add this content to the existing 'cancer compensation' page? Create individual pages of content answering each question, linking to the 'cancer compensation' page? or do I amalgamate all the answers into one heafty 'resource' page that sits elsewhere on the site? What do you think? Thanks in advance. John King
On-Page Optimization | | Muhammad-Isap0 -
Do links in footers or side bars count less than links in the center of the web page?
do links in footers or side bars count less than links in the center of the web page? How much less if so? I have some articles on my site. Would i get more of a boost in rankings to pages of my site by placing links in the text of my articles on my site to other pages on my site? Thanks mozzers!
On-Page Optimization | | Ron100 -
Contact pages coming up for keywords above landing pages
I have two examples of contact pages coming up over designated landing pages Keyword: Nickel Alloys for www.neonickel.com Keyword: Artificial Grass for www.artificialgrass4u.co.uk Is there anyway I can stop this happening?
On-Page Optimization | | icansee0 -
Ecommerce- Keyword use in Product links on Category page
I'm wondering how Keyword use in Product links on Category pages can affect a pages rank? I have 1 site where this seems to be an issue but not on all categories. For this site, a site: keyword search ranks the category page as no.1 in the SERPS but a non-site: search shows 1 of the many products within the category as the highest ranking page (currently 20 in google) on this site. This product is probably the least likely to generate a conversion due to it's cost so this is less than ideal. The plural search of the keyword shows the category page and it ranks higher than the keyword itself (currently 9 in google) Category name and URL = keyword. The category is paginated with 12 products per page. Product URL and anchor text is brand-model-type (where type = keyword) I'd like to keep the product URLs and anchors as they are if I can as they are well searched terms themselves but I want to optimize a category page to rank for the keyword itself. Have any of you overcome a similar issue? Would adding more text to the category page dilute the issue?
On-Page Optimization | | MarcOZ0 -
On page SEO Strategy / What pages to use?
What is the best page to use for targeting your hard to rank keywords? The keyword phrases in question here are "Acrylic Tank Manufacturing", "Custom Aquariums", & "Acrylic Aquariums" As of right now we have created 3 separate pages for each one of these keyword phrases. http://seaquaticaquariums.com/custom-aquariums for "Custom Aquariums" http://www.seaquaticaquariums.com/custom-aquariums/acrylic-aquariums/ for "Acrylic Aquariums" http://www.seaquaticaquariums.com/services/acrylic-tank-manufacturing/ for "Acrylic Tank Manufacturing" Or are we better of using the home page http://www.seaquaticaquariums.com/ for the our main hard to rank for terms. Generally speaking I would think more people will link to our home page.
On-Page Optimization | | SeaQuatic0 -
Duplicated Page Content
I have encountered this weird problem about duplicate page content. My site got 3 duplicate content similar on the link structure below. If I'm going to use rel canonical does it help to resolve the duplication problem? Thanks http://www.sample.com http://www.sample.com/ http://www.sample.com/index.php
On-Page Optimization | | mattvectorbpo0 -
Framed Pages and Dynamic Pages
Has anyone else had experience with different CMS's for Ecommerce . Ones that create static pages and others that dynamically create pages. What differences have you seen with rankings on google with the two. Here are two examples of sites using static framed pages and one with a system that dynamically creates pages - http://www.gardeningexpress.co.uk/ - static frames and http://www.floraselect.co.uk - dynamically
On-Page Optimization | | onlinemediadirect0