Too Many On Page Links, rel="nofollow" and rel="external"
-
Hi,
Though similar to other questions on here I haven't found any other examples of sites in the same position as mine.
It's an e-commerce site for mobile phones that has product pages for each phone we sell. Each tariff that is available on each phone links through to the checkout/transfer page on the respective mobile phone network. Therefore when the networks offer 62 different tariffs that are available on a single phone that means we automatically start with 62 on page links that helps to quickly tip us over the 100 link threshold.
Currently, we mark these up as rel="external" but I'm wondering if there isn't a better way to help the situation and prevent us being penalised for having too many links on page so:
- Can/should we mark these up as rel="nofollow" instead of, or as well as, rel="external"?
- Is it inherently a problem from a technical SEO point of view?
- Does anyone have any similar experiences or examples that might help myself or others?
As always, any help or advice would be much appreciated
-
How is your transfer page working, technically - it seems to be resolving as a straight 200 for me. Those transfer pages are usually where affiliates start to get creative (they might 302, for example).
-
Thanks Tela.
I think you might be on to something here. You're right that the worry is looking needlessly spammy by having too many affiliate links on page and also about conserving link juice.
It's something I'll have to speak to our development team about because generating the tariff code dynamically might take a fair bit of work. It's definitely an idea I think we should investigate.
Regarding the interstitial URL/step after the user select the phone they want - there is already a 'transfer page' that holds them for a few seconds before taking them to the network's basket/checkout. I fear that adding yet another step before that would have a negative impact on the customer journey as we already see people dropping out in the post-transfer stage before completing the sale.
Cheers for the help.
-
Thanks Dr Pete.
The target page takes the customer to a dynamic 'transfer' page with affiliate tracking information that ensures the sale gets attributed to us. We have to do this because we don't have our own cart/checkout system. It's not an affiliate link swapping program or anything dubious - we don't actually get linked back to by the networks. I'd have thought Google was used to handling official affiliate programs.
I can totally see why it would look bad to Google by having this many external affiliate links on page but there is little we can do about the number of deals that the network offers. Our system of showing a restricted number of deals upon landing with the option to see 10 more at a time helps deal with UX issues.
It's reassuring to note that it is less of an issue because it is a deeper page than the home page.
Seeing as we are official affiliates to the major networks can you recommend any practices or techniques to mitigate the impact of large numbers of affiliate links to their sites?
-
I agree with Dr. Pete that this seems like the same sort of challenge that affiliate links have, even if this isn't a standard affiliate program link. It sounds to me like there might be a UI/UX solution that could address this issue.
Could you add an intersticial URL / step after the user selects the phone they want that contains the tariff codes? Could you use a selector on the page to let the user select and generate the link with the tariff code dynamically, thus having one on-page URL conserving link juice? Just a couple of ideas, but it seems like the real issue is conserving link juice, and it's not necessary to keep the on-page links under the 100 link limit.
-
Since these are really external links, it's a bit different calculus, especially since they're deeper on the site. "Nofollow" won't really help from a link juice perspective (it still gets burnt), although it would disavow those links, in a sense.
How is the target page redirecting to the outside site? I'm having a hard time telling with header checkers. That could impact the SEO implications quite a bit. This almost seems like an affiliate link sort of scenario, so it's more a matter of how Google sees the hundreds of links between these two sites.
They're definitely burning up some internal link equity, but at this level of the site (search results to product pages), that's not as big of an issue as if this were the home-page or a major category page, etc.
-
I get what you're saying. That's the general SEO best practice that I'm aware of. I was just looking for something a bit deeper than general kind of guidance.
Our user navigation isn't ideal (sadly there's not much as SEO I can do about it) but with the right filters and options it works ok. We can't really remove the links because they are the tariff options as they come through from the networks themselves. We do however show a tailored few when people land on the page with the option to see all deals.
With that in mind I'm essentially asking is there a better way to markup these links than with rel="external"? They are external links after all but we don't want to risk having this many links on the page cause negative side effects.
The user experience is generally fine and the number of links is fixed. I wonder if we can't do better with what we currently have by improving our PR distribution somehow.
Here is an example of a product page:
-
you can have over 100 links on a page now. that was an old rule when Google had limited bandwidth and the crawler would abandon a page acter following a certain number of links. now google sucks up whatever there is on a page.
do what makes most sense for user navigation. too many links can be overkill or might fit perfectly into your model.
Keep in mind you are really splitting up your PR by having so many links and pushing pr to all pages instead of the main ones.
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
-
Which links to map across in site redesign
Hi there, I'm currently doing a fairly major website redesign for a client. They are moving to my hosting so I am creating the site on my cloud account and have edited my host files to work on it. The site structure will stay largely the same as it is quite a straightforward services site. However I'm moving them onto Wordpress from a different set up and I'm not sure how many of the links that they have, that aren't straight forward pages, I need to create redirects for. I have used Screaming Frog to get a list of all their URLs, of which there are 82. However alongside text/ html links I have: image/jpeg text/css
Web Design | | Frog-Marketing
application/javascript Do I need to create redirects for all of these link types? Or just any of the pages I'm not using? Many thanks, Sarah.0 -
Have you changed 100's of links on your site? Tell me the why's, the how's and what's!
Hello there. If you've changed 100's of links, then I'd like for you to contribute to this thread. I've created a new URL structure for a website with 500+ posts in an effort to make it more user friendly, and more accessible to crawlers. I was just about to pull the trigger, when I started reading up on the subject and found that I might have a few surprises waiting for me around the corner. The status of my site. 500 posts 10 different categories 50+ tags No Backlinks No recent hits (according to Google Analytics) No rankings. I'm going to keep roughly 75% of the posts, and put them in different (new) categories to strengthen SEO for the topic which I'd like to rank multiple categories for, and also sorted a list with content which I'd like to 410. Created new structure created new categories Compiled list of old URLs, and new URLs New H1, Meta Title & Descriptions New tags It looks simple on paper, but I've got problems executing it. **Question 1. **What do I need to keep in mind when deleting posts, categories, and tags - besides 410, Google URL removal? Question 2. What do I do with all the old posts that I am going to re-direct? Each post has between 10-15 internal links. I've started manually removing each link in old posts before 301'ing them. The reason I'm doing this is control the UX, as well as internal link juice to strengthen main categories. Am I on the right path? On a side note, I've prepared for the 301'ing by changing the H1's, meta data and adding alt text to images. But I can't help but to think that just deleting the old posts, and copying over the content to the new url (with the original dates set) would be a better alternative. Any contribution to this thread would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Web Design | | Dan-Louis1 -
Needs clarification: How "Disallow: /" works?
Hi all, I need clarification on this. I have noticed we have given "Disallow: /" in one of our sub-directory beside homepage. So, how it going to work now? Will this "Disallow: /" at sub-directory level going to disallow only that directory or entire website? If it is going to work for entire website; we have already given one more Disallow: / at homepage level blocking few folders. How it is going to handle with two Disallow: / commands? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Pointless copy on product list pages makes me feel compromised...
When working on ecommerce websites we insist that product list pages need at least 250 words of copy that is optimised for our keyword phrase ... lets say "17 inch bike frames". So we have some crappy copy written that goes something like this.... "We have a great 17 inch bike frame for you whatever your requirement. Take a look at the frames below .... blah blah blah totally pointless text blah blah blah........." This text is of no use to the user as the page is merely a means of them getting to a suitable product page. However, the copy is pretty essential if we want to rank well for "17 inch bike frames" and not having copy on product list pages could land us in hot water with Panda ...especially if we have lots of them on a site using the same page template and with no copy on them. Does anyone else feel uneasy with adding this crappy text to pages? It's only there for search engines and that is something that Google say's we shouldn't do but I know for sure they're not going to rank me as well if I don't have it. I'd be interested to hear other people's opinion on this. It's always annoyed me. Does anyone have any good tips for making this type of copy on product list pages less forced and crappy?
Web Design | | QubaSEO0 -
404 page in Windows IIS. HELP!
I run a real estate website.
Web Design | | Jeepster
My webmaster needs to create a 404 page for listings when they get deleted.
So far all he's come up with is 302-redirect to a standard "error template" page.
Can anyone suggest a 404 how-to guide I can show him?
Thanks0 -
Pin It Button, Too Many Links, & a Javascript question...
One of the sites I work for has some massive on-page link problems. We've been trying to come up with workarounds to lower the amount of links without making drastic changes to the page design and trying to stay within SEO best practices. We had originally considered the NoFollow route a few months back but that's not viable. We changed around some image and text links so they were wrapped together as one link instead of being two links to the same place. We're currently running tests on some pages to see how else to handle the issue. What has me stumped now though is that the damned Pinterest Pin Button counts as an external link and we've added it to every image in our galleries. Originally we found that having a single Pin It button on a page was pulling incorrect images and not listing every possible image on the page... so to make sure that a visitor can pin the exact picture they want, we added the button to everything. We've been seeing a huge uptick in Pinterest traffic so we're definitely happy with that and don't want to get rid of the button. But if we have 300 pictures (which are all links) on a page with Pin It buttons (yet more links) we then have 600+ links on the page. Here's an example page: http://www.fauxpanels.com/portfolio-regency.php When talking with one of my coders, he suggested some form of javascript might be capable of making the button into an event instead of a link and that could be a way to keep the Pin It button while lowering on-page links. I'm honestly not sure how that would work, whether Google would still count it as a link, or whether that is some form of blackhat cloaking technique we should be wary of. Do any of you have experience with similar issues/tactics that you could help me with here? Thanks. TL;DR Too many on page links. Coder suggests javascript "alchemy" to turn lead into gold button links into events. Would this lower links? Or is it bad? Form of Cloaking?
Web Design | | MikeRoberts0 -
Keywords in the page url for best SEO
Hello all, I am working in the keywors structure of a web and I have the following doubt: If I want to target these keywords: great food madrid and my website is: http://www.madridlive.com I do not know if I should keep either: OPTION 1: page url: www.madridlive.com/great-food-madrid or OPTION 2: page url www.madridlive.com/great-food I do not know if the search engines "understands" madrid in "madridlive", therefore I can avoid the "madrid" keyword, dicarding option 1 and going for option 2. Additionally I avoid duplication of the madrid keyword that can be seen as redundancy and also have a shorter page url. Thank you very much and sorry for such a question but I am new in this SEO field...just the excellent SEOMOZ's SEO Guide for beginners! Best regards, Antonio
Web Design | | aalcocer20030 -
Transitioning to a dynamic home page. Impact on SEO?
Home page redesign advice, please. We're a growing college textbook publishing company; a unique one in that we publish everything under an open license. Our homepage www.flatworldknowledge.com has a solid page score (80), and since our product serves several different customers/audiences -- students, faculty, bookstores -- we're transitioning to a dynamic home page approach. Returning instructors will be served a personalized faculty page, returning students a student oriented page featuring the books they've most recently accessed, and first time/anon visitors will receive a more neutral welcome page until we know more about them. Pros, cons with this change to a dynamic homepage? What should we be thinking about/concerned about from an SEO perspective? How do you address title tags? Will this approach dilute page authority? Thanks all!
Web Design | | JasonBilog0