Brand new website, should I nofollow almost all internal links?
-
Hi,
As I am creating a completely new website for my employer (she will have zero incoming links, even the URL will be different), would it be advantageous to allow follows to the other internal pages from the home page, but disallow follows on all other internal links on each subsequent page?
So, for example each page will have this many internal links:
Home page: 5 (all 5 service pages)
Recruiting: 1 (home link)
Services: 1 (home link)
Talent Assessment: 1 (home link)
etc.
Does this make sense to bolster the home page until we can get some links coming in?
-
Hi there,
As a general rule, you almost always want to "follow" internal links - this includes links between internal pages. To do otherwise could hurt your SEO.
Links do a lot of things. They create a path for search robots to crawl your site. They send off relevancy and popularity signals to ranking algorithms.
Is there any particular reason you thought of "nofollowing" your internal links?
About the only time you want to add nofollow to internal links is when doing so prevents search robots from going down the wrong path, such as so-called spider traps, or sometimes as a layer of protection to keep robots from crawling certain pages (not the best method to use)
Regardless, making sure your internal links are followed has many, many benefits. This is one of my favorite blog posts of all time - although a little dated, it applies to internal links as well as external: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links
Hope this helps. Best of luck with your SEO!
-
yes and from a content perspective , it looks sensible and goes with the flow.
-
If its a new web site best practise is not to no follow any pages you want indexed. That said internal no follows are ignored anyway nowadays. Internal link juice manipulation, like external is not a great idea.
-
You mean, as long as each link is its own keyword, but doesn't repeat the keyword from the homepage?
-
as long as they are not targeting one particular keyword, you should be ok
-
Well, I plan on having my internal links so that the visitors can go from one page to the next from any page. The layout of the website is rather simple. It will be a home page and 5 supporting pages as of now. So, each page would have a total of 6 internal links if they were followed. Is that okay or would it matter if I just made the home page the only followed link?
-
Not necessarily, if the internal links are correctly in place to guide visitors in the right direction , then you're ok having them on the internal pages. You mentioned only 1 internal link for the inner pages , which should be ok. The issue would be if you overdid it and had lots of keyword rich internal links created to link to other 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
-
Submit new list of links to be disavowed
I had a question and I am hoping that some one on this community will be able to help clarify. We went through a link removal and disavow process last year. If we see more unnatural links showing up in our link profile and we want to disavow those links, what should be included in the new list of links that need to be disavowed: Only new links or domains Old list that was disavowed + new list that needs to be disavowed Thank you in advance for your help.
Link Building | | revenuexl0 -
Internal Linking and Related Search
Hi there, Is it a bad idea to use Google related terms when creating internal links? For instance, if I search for 'printing companies chicago', there are at least 3 terms related to our organization and what we provide that appear at the bottom of the search results. Searches related to printing companies chicago reliable printing companies chicago
Link Building | | SEOSponge
chicago business card printing
chicago printers Just curious if anyone uses this type of research to build out pages? And create internal links? Personally, I am seeing people search for services we offer in different ways - that alone makes me think it should be a major part of our internal linking. Looking forward to your feedback!0 -
Internal Linking Building
I'm launching a new blog for my new website. What's the best way to do internal link building for 3D Scanning? Do I link 3D Scanning to another page on my website or on a different website that has high authority for 3D scanning? Thank You in advance! -Nick
Link Building | | X2Metrology10 -
No-index tags-Can they be used in internal linking?
On my site http://villasdiani.com I am using yoast seo plugin and have I am using tags to organize category with villas on self-catering, full board etc but I have them set no-index as I believe they would create only duplicate content for the categories. Is it still ok to use this tags for internal linking? Example: I have a post in my blog which links to category Beach Villas(they are set to be indexed) and I would like to add option also for self-catering villas itself, which is a tag(set no-index) I am not sure if I am getting this right. Thank you very much, Iris
Link Building | | Rebeca10 -
Root Domain Link for Affiliate's Link
It seems my affiliate link: http://www.hrmsplugins.com?partners=21 is not being considered as a "root domain" backlink when this link is used on their website. Is there a reason for this?
Link Building | | delphia0 -
Is it ok for a web design company to have a branded footer link on their client's sites?
Now I know that in general footer links to your site from another site are bad...this is because they are very often spammy...however I like to think that Google is pretty smart and I am of the opinion that a web design company should be able to link back to their own site. Here's why: If a visitor comes across a site that they love the design of, and they want a new website built...why shouldn't they be able to click through to the web designers site? (as long as the client is happy to link to it of course) I also feel that if there are a whole bunch of high authority/pagerank websites have been designed by a web design company and they therefore have a footer link pointing to them, it's probably a pretty good sign that they're a good web designer. Is it not? In saying this I think that the link anchor text should be branded rather than keywords. For example I usually write "Web Design by Static Shift" I'm interested to hear people's thoughts. Am I being blinded by my bias? Thoughts aside, and onto the facts...what are people's experiences with footer links for a web design company. Do they help or hinder?
Link Building | | Static_Shift3 -
Should I remove links from my internal blog?
I have blogs/news sites on every one of my clients' websites (each representing a different business within the same industry - self storage). On each of these blog sites, I have a writer who places about 3-5 exact keyword match links (varying anchor text) to give interlink juice to the other off-site businesses owned by the client. Each of these blogs receive about five posts per week. I am sure this is mega-over-optimizing and a stupid thing to do considering penguin. So, my questions are: Moving forward - 1. Should i stop adding so many blog articles to each site? 2. How many interlinking anchor texts should I use per blog? 3. Should I go back and either get rid of all those interlinks on past blogs or just trash the blog articles altogether? Please help if you can - I very much appreciate the responses best bd
Link Building | | creativeguy0 -
Link building for rankings VS Link building for relationships
A Big Shout To Everyone -- Good Morning and What's Up 🙂 As I read today through seomoz professional guide to link building and the section why link building matters and in addition to this a newsletter I received today that changed my whole thinking towards link building for rankings vs for relationships. It is already happening on social networks if you are active there, but what about on your website. What are your thoughts on the following ? Google's job is provide the most relevant results to surfers online, and looking the link profile of a site & the page itself is the key to determining which page to serve on plate to the surfers link query ! Webmasters Site Objective:
Link Building | | helpwanted
I think that we as webmasters have to ask ourselves what do we want to achieve with link building. To get quick traffic or build slow authority links, high rankings, lead generation, sales & other things here I may be missing etcccc Other Objective Networking & Relationship Building Alliances : What I discovered today is that building links for 1st page rankings are great and will provide me with steady traffic, but not all of it is targeted traffic, but what else can I do to bring targeted traffic and at the same time try to build alliances with other related non competing business owners online. The idea... is to apply old school networking / relationship building alliances to get targeted traffic to my site that can actually benefit from my services. How Do We Achieve This I become a editor for approving resource links for me site, only the best will be placed on my site as a resource. Build a valuable tightly themed categorized resource section with related non competing resources that can help my sites visitors find what they are looking for, send visitors to non competing resources that may purchase their services which helps me build a relationship with them, and may can with rankings as well, provided I am selective with my qualification process. Questions & Concerns Below : What should I be thinking about when creating a resource categorized links page How many outgoing do follow links should I allow from this links partner page How will this links resource page affect my own SE 1st Page Rankings and is it worth it based on getting targeted traffic Any pros / cons I may be missing here0