Too Many on page links! Will "NoFollow" for navigation help?
-
I am getting to many on page links ( for all my pages). Here is my website:
http://www.websterpowerproducts.co.uk
I think it is to do with the the navigation bar down the right hand side. I don't really want to get ride of this as it offers users a way of getting where they want without lots of clicking.
I was wondering if adding a "NoFollow" tag to each of they links would stop the link juice getting diluted by the navigation bar.
Many Thanks
-
From Google's perspective: "If those pages are 'non-important' why are you linking to them from the navigation on every page?"
I didn't see any right-hand navigation, but I did see navigation on the left side. I do not see an issue with it, however, as this is an important way to get people and search engine spiders to category and eventually product pages. Perhaps you are thinking too hard about this so I will throw my opinion in along with the three other experienced SEOs above who all I think agree on this:
Do not nofollow your navigation links. Do not get rid of them. Do not worry about losing "link juice" into those pages.
If you truly think a page is unimportant, such as a category that doesn't sell many products, consider removing it from the navigation. Here's an example of how that might be done in this case:
I see the fly-out navigation to sub-categories includes all sub-categories for each main category. You could choose the top five sub-cats and then include a "See more categories" type of link instead of showing them all. This could be useful on a long list of sub-cats like the one under "Power Tool Accessories". You could limit the navigation to just two categories deep instead of including the third fly-out navigation level (e.g. Power Tool Accessories --> Bit Sets --> Socket Sets).
If the argument is that those third level categories are useful to visitors, thus you want to leave them there, then you have answered your question. Leave them. Don't worry about page-rank. If they are important enough for visitors to want them there and to use them, they are important enough to have their small share of pagerank.
If you choose to ignore all of this advice and want them to be there, but not pass pagerank, you can change the way your navigation operates by using a script so there aren't actually any href tags on the page for the navigation. All of the links would be controlled in the script, which would be placed in an external .js file, which could be inside a folder that is blocked in the robots.txt file. I don't recommend it, but that's one way to do it.
-
I would definitely not use no-follow, that just doesn't make any sense as your navigation links are part of your link juice to those pages.
Also, no-follow is meant for links that are outside a webmasters control or for paid links so they are not intended to be used by a webmaster on his own site linking to his own content.
As for too many links in the navigation (at least that is what I assume you meant), that indeed can be a problem for useability. It is always a good idea to see how well-known brands handle this problem, so have a look at for example http://www.ebay.com/ and http://www.amazon.com/
By not showing all links directly in the navigation you can have both a more user friendly website and get rid of the issue you think you have with search engines as then you can better funnel the link juice to the more important pages.
-
Matt Cutts says: Don't no-follow internal links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bVOOB_Q0MZYHe also points out the "issue" of too many links per page is not an issue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=l6g5hoBYlf0 -
Thank you for your answer.
I am actually trying to stop lnk juice for passing through the navigation bar as I think it is just diluting up the page rank to non-important pages.
-
Unfortunately it won't. Some time ago (like one or two years) Google has announced a change in the way they handle nofollow in combination with link juice. Adding nofollow will only prevent juice from flowing to those pages, but won't distribute it over the other pages like it would when the nofollow'ed links weren't there.
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
-
Should I optimize my home-page or a sub-page for my most important keyword
Quick question: When choosing the most important keyword set that I would like to rank for, would I be better off optimizing my homepage, or a sub page for this keyword. My thinking goes as follows: The homepage (IE www.mysite.com) naturally has more backlinks and thus a better Google Page Rank. However, there are certain things I could do to a subpage (IE www.mysite.com/green-widgets-los-angeles ) that I wouldn't want to do to the homepage, which might be more "optimal" overall. Option C, I suppose, would be to optimize both the homepage, and a single sub-page, which is seeming like a pretty good solution, but I have been told that having multiple pages optimized for the same keywords might "confuse" search engines. Would love any insight on this!
On-Page Optimization | | Jacob_A2 -
How many Anchor text i can make on One page.
I would like to have clear answer in numbers i.e. 1, 2, 3, or 4 etc. of how many Anchor text i can make on One page.????
On-Page Optimization | | 1akal0 -
Should I noindex, nofollow a lot of child pages?
Some category pages on my website have A LOT of product pages in them. Many of these pages do not receive any sort of organic traffic. Is there a reason for Google to be crawling these pages? Should I noindex, nofollow these pages to make Google's life a little easier? Could I possibly see some benefits from this or should I leave it the way it is?
On-Page Optimization | | jampaper0 -
Page Analysis - Helping Product Pages Outrank Search Results Pages
Hi! We have a lot of our search results pages that have been indexed and outrank our product pages and in some instance the actual product pages barely show up at all. Here is an example query that includes our brand name: http://goo.gl/cgB6W So, we have loads of actual product pages, video pages, etc that should be showing up here, but are not and this is just one example. Unfortunately, there are a LOT of these Search Results pages out there and utlimately we would love to de-index them altogether, but it's going to have to be carefully done. So, was wondering if anyone would want to check out one of our product pages and give any feedback as to what we could change to possibly improve rank or to make them more search friendly or hopefully to help them rise above these indexed search results pages? Here is an example product page: http://goo.gl/2R4IT Thanks!! Craig
On-Page Optimization | | TheCraig0 -
Internal Links: Navigation Bar vs. Body Text
Hello. I have a page on our site that is especially popular and has many inbound links. This page has the same site navigation buttons (at the top) as every other page on the site. Do these site navigation buttons pass along link juice to other pages in the same way that an internal link would elsewhere on the page? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | nyc-seo0 -
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 -
SEOmoz tells me that I have too many links, however most of them are comments...
Is this affecting the overall ranking of the page? http://www.smileclinic.sk/zubne-implantaty/ (164) http://www.smileclinic.sk/zubne-korunky/ (179) If so how can I disallow them? We use Wordpress with the Joost SEO plugin, but I don't see a disallow option there for comments...
On-Page Optimization | | danielshaw0 -
Navigation Links
Our developers typically have a CSS driven html menu at the top of the page with links to inside pages. They then have the same links in the footer. Does this double navigation cause any SEO issues or does Google disregard the second set of links? Thanks, Mark
On-Page Optimization | | DenverKelly0