Best On-Site Internal Linking Practices?
-
Hi everyone,
Our company works extensively with ecommerce website, and we're beginning to wonder with all of the impending Google updates what our best bets for internal linking practices will be, in particular when it comes to menu options. We typically set up our navigation with top-level categories in the main menu, then drop downs to the sub-category level pages. Our question is, should the links in the drop-down menus be followed, and if so, should they be followed links across all pages of the website, or just on the homepage menu list, or not at all?
We're trying to figure out what will pass the most internal linking power without being too much and overly "spammy," I guess.
Thanks for your input!
-
Thanks so much for the input, everyone. Really appreciate all of your opinions. We'll do some experimenting with the navigation layout as per your recommendations and see how we can make it work for us!
Thanks again, guys!
-
Takeshi is right, James- you gain nothing by adding nofollow to internal links. In addition, if you attract attention with a lot of it, you could even incur a penalty. Matt Cutts has stated more than once that nofollowing internal links isn't advisable, except perhaps in limited special circumstances, such as to a contact form or privacy policy. If you get carried away with internal nofollow, it could look like you're trying to sculpt pagerank, and that could cause you problems you don't want to have.
-
Again, you don't want to nofollow your internal links. Nofollowing your links has no positive impact, and just prevents any link value from flowing to your internal pages.
If you have a particularly large category structure, one thing you may want to try is limiting the links in your drop-downs to the top subcategories. Even if you have 10 different menus with 20 different subcategories each, chances are 80% of your users are only selecting 20% of the links (or less). Install a site tracker such as CrazyEgg or Clciktale to figure out which links your users actually use, and eliminate the ones that don't get many clicks.
So your navigation would look something like this:
Automobiles
Tires
Oil
Batteries
Accessories
More Auto Products -
Have you tried turning the drop down off and running a test to see how your goals compare? Or even if just the pages / visit etc.. drop.
-
We do have that implemented on some sites...but for others, we prefer the drop-down feature for easier navigation on the user end. So when a user hovers over the top-level category, the sub-category options appear below it, so less clicking through to a number of different pages - users can go straight to the sub-category they're looking for straight from the homepage. I guess these are really the links we're curious about - the sub-category links in the drop-down menus...to follow or not to follow?
Thanks for all of your input so far - much appreciated!!
-
Having just the top level categories in the main menu like you said is a good option. No need to overload the users with too many choices. Then once the user is in a specific category, the sidebar nav can show navigation links for subcategories.
-
The only issue I think we would run into with this is that some of our catalogs get rather large, and we don't want to have too MANY on-page links. We know that having no-follow links won't cause more link power to flow to other links, but we're wondering what would be the best, most efficient, most powerful way to handle a large catalog without overloading the links on each page...
-
Ooops, I'd done this on my own site.
We had a menu linking to all pages on every page. I tried limiting this but the design of the site put some limitations on me, so I implemented rel=nofollow on some internal pages....
I think now I'll go remove them.....
-
Nofollowing a link does not cause more link power to flow to your other links, it just causes that link juice that would have gone to that page to "evaporate", resulting in a loss of link equity. In general, you NEVER want to nofollow your own pages.
As far as internal linking for ecommerce sites goes, I generally look to amazon.com & overstock.com for good site architecture and good ecommerce SEO in general.
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
-
Will short linking to my site affect SERPs attribution of inbound link?
Some brand partners are using their short links to link back to our site (like bit.ly but they have their own). They have a high domain authority and trust so we want that link back to be read by Google. When I downloaded all inbound links from Moz, this brand's site was not listed, making me worried that the inbound link isn't being seen or considered! Haven't been able to find any info on this...
Link Building | | PAC31350 -
Internal linking on my webpages
When I create internal links on my website should I use the keyword or at least a related keyword ( synonym ) every time... I am asking because on my website it is hard to create links from one sub section to another subsection linking with a anchor text that relates to the other category. For example in the travel industry it is hard to have a page that talks about Florida and on the page find a way to link the keywords, California , NY and Missouri ( other than listing those next to each other ... ) as they do not belong to my content about Florida but are all different states listed in my " states category " If I link the words next to each other in the page Florida, such as "you should also check California, NY, Missouri etc... " does it carry any value doing that or does it need to be surrounded by text that is related ? Or is it better to list it in a menu on the right or left side on my page ? ( which one caries more value ) Or if I have the word beach in my Florida page and link it to California is it better even though the user doesn't know what he or she is going to find by clicking on beach ? Thank you,
Link Building | | seoanalytics0 -
Guest Posts on Sites With Irrelevant Outbound Links
Suppose you came across a website in your niche with solid domain authority that accepts guest posts. However you notice some of the guest posts are linking out to somewhat off-topic sites. If you already have an article that you think would be accepted easily and all you have to do is spend 10 minutes to craft an email pitch, would you do it? Why?
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Does a hashtag link pass the same amount of link juice as a link without a hashtag?
Example 1: link to: http://www.domain.com/#something-inside-the-page Example 2: link to: http://www.domain.com/
Link Building | | adriandg0 -
How do you remove links TO your site?
Lots of old links to our wine rack store site from many years ago, how do I get these removed? block them? Not sure if Penguin got us because of these....
Link Building | | AmazingUniverse560 -
What is the best way to get unique links?
I do SEO for an online store that sells vacuum cleaners. I write a lot of articles for yahoo, hub pages, etc as well as promoted press releases. But I'm looking to get some more unique links. I'm looking for any tips I can get. I've done tons of directories that have actually got a couple keywords on the front page of google but I'm looking to shy away from link directories. I write a few articles every week. I also try and create new social networking sites for the business. Does anyone have any new ideas?
Link Building | | evacuumstoreSEO0 -
Why Google is not getting many of the links to my site?
Hello, I have a website for cosmetics, selling and a lot of information (http://www.vipcosmetica.com). For about half a year I've been working also in seo for several google keywords. My question is about the external links to my site. Using different tools, including those of SEOMoz, I see just a few links to my site, however there are plenty, because I've been putting them myself, in public directories, related blogs, industry websites and so on. Alexa shows 5 links only, OpenSiteExplorer shows 4, and Market Samurai 9. I thinks theres should be like 50-60 links, minimum, in pages with good google PR (Youtube, Vimeo, Vulka, Hotfrog, Digg, Flickr, etc.). In Alexa, recently two more links appeared, from two blogs that have copied some content from my site (priveta policy) without changing the original links that point to other pages on my site, and those are the links that Alexa shows now. What could be the reason the rest of the links do not appear at all? Thank you very much
Link Building | | MadridOriflame0 -
Best Way to Analyse Linking Structure of My Site
My site http://www.taxproblem.org is now undergoing many changes due to bad report card scores from this site. I've had people tell me that my linking structure was obviously artificial, especially if most of my links are from "Mr. Wong - social site" O.K. stop laughing 🙂 Yes we use bookmarking demon and rss feed wp plug ins, etc. But haven't discovered how to best get links yet, although reading a lot and waiting on seomoz's DVD's I ordered. 1. What is the best way to analyse our sites linking structure to determine if Google will consider it bad (my site was trashed by Google twice in the last two years) probably for link farms and the like. I know the obvious, but I was looking for a program with guidelines to judge by. 2. The best source to review the many strategies for getting back links so I am not a victim of rehashed b/s based on someones fears of Google, but actually good methods that work. We offer something of value. (CPA firm doing IRS rep. and we have a free download so people can do their own IRS rep and save thousands, and know it's done right) I need to know the bast way to market this. I need good souces for info and for keeping up. Thanks in advance to all that can help.
Link Building | | joemas990