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.
Built some companies, sold some companies. Currently building https://roi.fyi.
-
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
-
Nofollow on internal links
Hi, What do you all think about using nofollow on internal links? On pages that arent so important and use dofollow on important pages maybe for example from the sites menu.
On-Page Optimization | | Rob-0 -
Link to social network
I have very powerfull social network but i do not link to them from my website to improve page speed and avoid external links on main page. Althought i do link from my twitter acounts , facebook and google to my site. Should i link to my twitter or social on main page. I do not want to send people to there. I want to send people from there to my page.
On-Page Optimization | | maestrosonrisas0 -
Home page and category page target same keyword
Hi there, Several of our websites have a common problem - our main target keyword for the homepage is also the name of a product category we have within the website. There are seemingly two solutions to this problem, both of which not ideal: Do not target the keyword with the homepage. However, the homepage has the most authority and is our best shot at getting ranked for the main keyword. Reword and "de-optimise" the category page, so it doesn't target the keyword. This doesn't work well from UX point of view as the category needs to describe what it is and enable visitors to navigate to it. Anybody else gone through a similar conundrum? How did you end up going about it? Thanks Julian
On-Page Optimization | | tprg0 -
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 the same page
I have a problem with to many links on the same page, and there all for the classified adds of my web site, what would be the best way to handle this.
On-Page Optimization | | clickit2getwithit0 -
What is everyone doing to reduce the number of links on a page?
Some clients of mine have sites that are throwing the "too many links on one page" error and we're not just talking a little more than the status quo 100 links, it's much more. I believe it could be due to the fly-out navigation. My Solution: shorten the Tier 2 categories in the left nav down to 5 and add a "View All" link after the 5th and remove top nav fly-outs. I'm not sure if these are best practices or the best for usability though?
On-Page Optimization | | LisaS130 -
Page Shaping - No Follow Links
It's my understanding that adding a nofollow tag to pages that aren't of significance to users can help with page shaping and directing google to the most important links on my home page. I have 4 links on my home page that I'm considering adding a nofollow tag to: Privacy Policy, Legal Policy, Anti-Trust Policy, and Help-Desk Because these links are in the footer on every page I think they're probably sucking up some useful link juice. It's doubtful that anyone would actually search for our privacy policy or legal policy to find our site. I'd rather the juice to spread to other pages of use. What do you guys recommend?
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja0 -
What is the effect of too many internal links on a page?
Hi there! We have been doing a great effort during the last year but our main competitor is still above us in search rankings. Basically, the main differente remains now in the number of internal links, specially in our homepage. We have more than 200 and they only have around 100, so I think we are wasting too much link power among some irrelevant pages. What could be the effect of this?
On-Page Optimization | | bodaclick0