I have a client where every page has over 100 links
-
Some links are in the main navigation (it has a secondary and tertiary level) and some links are repeated in the left navigation. Every page has over 100 links if crawled.
From a practical standpoint, would you (a) delete the 3rd-level links (or at least argue for that) or (b) rel='nofollow' them? From a usability standpoint, this setup works as they are almost one click from everything. From a crawl standpoint, I see some pages missed in google (the sitemap has over 200 links).
Looking for the best on-page current SEO advice to set these guys on the road to success.
-
The site isn't low quality (there are no ads and they don't sell anything -- it is a scientific site) -- it's just that EVERY link is available as a secondary or tertiary link. My initial thought is to simply get rid of the tertiary level within the main nav, cutting out roughly half of the links. On any inside page, they are available on a left-side nav anyway. The smallest number of links is about 110, the largest is pushing 250. I just wondered about everyone's opinion.
Rendering the menu via jQuery as Chad suggests might help. This is a wordpress-based site so I'll have to really look into it as they have to edit it too.
We've already begun mapping out clicks as goals (conversions) within GA.
-
If the site has good authority/PR I wouldnt worry about it although I would look at in-page analytics to see whether people actually click the links. If its setup like this to pass link juice the above is more applicable, if not look at whether people are actually clicking the links and if they arent id suggest an alternative navigation.
-
First off, never use rel='nofollow' to your own site.
Personally, I would trim up the left menu if you can, or find an easier / creative JavaScript-driven way to present the data. The 100 links thing isn't a law written in stone. SEOmoz's tools do yell about it if you go over 100 links. This "100 link lore" comes from a Matt Cutts blog post:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-many-links-per-page/
If you look close, you may notice that there are more than 100 links even on the page that Matt wrote about this. It's kind of a loose guideline in my eyes. From my own professional experience, if every page on your site has 500 links, you're going to hurt for it. But if you have 125 links on quite a few pages, or put out a blog post that's just an insane resource that links to a few hundred people, you'll still be just fine.
I'd think about it as just one more signal of a potentially abusive or low quality site. If your site isn't under heavy scrutiny for other reasons, and you don't go totally nuts with links, you'll probably be just fine, but there is a lot of wisdom in Matt Cutt's post all the same. Eliminate the unnecessary and things will work better, in and out of Google.
-
Use jQuery- it will basically solve all your to many links on a page.
Chad
-
nofollow is not a good idea if you have a good pagerank I wouldn't worry about it. But remove duplicates first..
-
We had a similar issue with one site -- a footer with a ton of links to all parts of the site, duplicated on every page. The feeling was that it flattened out the site's link structure too much, so we changed it so that the footer was loaded via ajax on page load.
In that case, I don't think it made much difference performance-wise so I can't say for certain if it will help you. But, it is a way to clean up your link structure.
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
-
Number of internal links and passing 'link juice' down to key pages.
Howdy Moz friends. I've just been checking out this post on Moz from 2011 and wanted to know how relevant it is today? I'm particularly interested in a number of links we have on our HP potentially harming important landing page rankings because not enough 'link juice is getting to them i.e) are they are being diluted by all the many other links on the page? (deeper pages, faqs, etc etc) It seems strange to me that as Google as has got more sophisticated this would still be that relevant (thus the reason for posting). Anyway, I thought I was definitely worth asking. If we can leverage more out of our on-page efforts then great 🙂
On-Page Optimization | | isaac6630 -
Will pushing a visitor to a conversion page hosted on a 3rd-party domain hurt the landing page ranking
Had an interesting question from a client. The client has a page that is optimized for a specific term. The goal of the page is to push users to sign-up for a trial. The trial registration (conversion) page is hosted by a third-party. Will pushing users to the conversion page cannibalize the SEO authority of the landing page. My reflexive answer is to say no, but now am not so sure.
On-Page Optimization | | infoblue0 -
Do javascript pseudo-links dilute link juice ?
Hi, On our ecommerce, we use multiple pseudo-links for the layered navigation (to filter by color, site, etc), so that google doesn't crawl every combination of filters. I know this kind of links don't pass link juice and don't get crawled (provided you hide the target urls in your javascript). But, as there is an "onclick" property, I'm afraid that google could understand that these are links, and treat them the same way as nofollowed links (not following them but diluting link juice anyway). Do you know if this is the case ? Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | Strelok0 -
Page 2 is ranking
Hey All, I'm working on a wordpress site project and in analytics the sites ranking url is page 2. is this a problem?
On-Page Optimization | | CobraJones950 -
E-commerce On Page Concern - Links and Anchor Text
Hi, how you doing? I have a set of very specific questions or concerns about anchor text and linking on an e-commerce category page. I was wondering if you could give your opinions and counsel. I own an e-commerce store about steel construction products. I have several category and product pages. One example of my categories is this. URL http://aceromart.com/Losacero-25-Ternium.aspx My concerns or questions: I have several technical specs or sheets. Which i include the link on the right part in "Informacion Adicional". How should i link those? I am bit worried on the anchor text. Should i use something like [download "product" technical sheet] or just [technical sheet of product] . I dont want to cannibalize, but i also want to appear as descriptive as possible. what would you recommend? The same thing happens on my videos. How should i link my videos? Is there a best practice? **what would you recommend. ** Thanks in advance for your opinions!
On-Page Optimization | | JesusD0 -
Too many links on product pages
Hello, What do you do if there are too many links on product pages? With 18 products per page, there's 2 links per product for 120 links on many pages. There's 50 products in many categories, categories are at most 1 click from the home page. Should we use pagination or not? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0 -
Too many links on home page
SEOmoz crawl states I have 3 pages with too many links. My sites are hosted on Yahoo small business. One page they state is too long is the home page/ind. with 600 links to each page on the web site ( I think). Is this really a problem and how do I fix it? The other two pages are product categories that link to the products under the main product type. What I do not understand is that we have many larger product categories that SEOmoz crawl is not stating too many.
On-Page Optimization | | Wales0 -
Duplicate Page Content for Product Pages
Hello, We have one website which URL is http://www.bannerbuzz.com & we have many product pages which having duplicate page content issue in SEOMOZ which are below. http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-1.html
On-Page Optimization | | CommercePundit
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-10.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-11.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-12.html
http://www.bannerbuzz.com/backlit-banners-13.html We haven't any content on these pages, still getting duplicate page content errors for all pages in SEOMOZ. Please help me how can i fix this issue. Thanks,0