Internal and Link Juice Analysis - Too Many Links Error
-
Howdy! I have an analysis question related to internal links/link juice.
Here is the general link set up of our site:
1. All Site Pages (Including Home Page): We have drop down "mega" menus in the header of everypage linking to various sub-categories on the site. So, because of this, in our header, we have a few hundred links to various pages on our site and these show up on every page of the site.
2. Product Pages: Header pages as mentioned above, but on top of that, we list out the keywords for that particular product and each keyword is linked back to our search results pages for that particular keyword. In General Moz is telling us we are having between 200-300 links on each product page.
Currently, our Search Results pages are ranking higher and showing up in search more than our actual product pages.
So, based on the above info, here are some thoughts:
1. Should we ajax in the Header links so that they aren't showing up for the search engines? Or, should we ajax them in only on all pages that are not the Home Page?
2. Should we get rid of the keyword links back to the Search Results pages that are on the product pages?
What effect would these changes "actually" have? Does this just improve crawling? Or are there other positive results that would come of changes like these?
We have hundreds of thousands of products, so if we were to make changes like these, could we experience negative results?
Thanks for your help!
Craig
-
@TheCraig - I don't have an answer for you, but I have a few thoughts I wanted to throw out there.
My concern about the AJAX links is it might be considered hiding content/deceptive behavior to the Google bot (but again, I don't know what the specific implementation is).
Idea 1 of 2: Is there any way you can use category pages?
So I was recently reading a well-recommended book, "SEO Secrets" by Danny Dover, and I came upon this interesting analogy describing the site architecture. I'll copy from another site's description of his analogy:
"One of my favorite analogies for a good site architecture I first heard from former Mozzer Danny Dover. Think of your website like an ant hill. The opening of the ant hill is your homepage. Each link is like a tunnel connecting various web page chambers. You want each of the chambers to be easily accessed from the top of the ant hill. That means you want to organize your website in a way that allows easy navigation from your home page all the way down to the deepest chamber of your site." -- Gyi Tsakalakis on Attorney Sync, link
Could you simplify your website into base categories that would make business sense?
I understand the predicament you're in. By conforming to SEO (by removing links from the dropdowns), you may be killing usability for the user and thus conversions.
Idea 2 of 2: If the question is important enough, why not bring on Danny Dover as a consultant directly to answer the question?
He seemed like site architecture was a big deal to him. Take a look at the first few chapters of his book: "The Importance of Good Site Architecture" (Chapter 2). He seemed to emphasize the topic through his book.
Then this is my idea: if it makes sense to do so (budget-wise), see if you can take him on for a few hours of his consulting time in order for you to explain your problem, and get a response. You have a very specific question (thus relatively straightforward to pick up and answer), and it might be fitting for a brief conversation.
The AJAX'ing is speculation (b/c no one actually knows how Google's inner workings). Why not get speculation and judgment from someone who really knows his stuff, rather than speculating with a bunch of strangers online?
It's a business expense to get the best judgment on what sounds like an important restructure!
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
-
We´re in trouble with our on site internal link optimization - please help
Dear Moz community, We have made a great mistake. Looking at keyword search volumes somehow Moz showed volumes for two keywords which only differentiate by an '**s (plural) as same. **Now we optimized our internal links (all links have the keyword) for the singular word. Now looking at other search volume estimations from competitors we see, that the plural has 5 times bigger volume. Our issue: If we change some of the category links now to another keyword, we will loose our ranking with the singular word. Correct? If we do not change any of our internal links, we will never rank in top 6 with the keyword. (currently singular is 6 and plural is 15) What would you reccomend?
On-Page Optimization | | advertisingcloud0 -
Long-tail with few searches vs. Generic with many
Our business is a contract packager/manufacturer of products sold to very prominent brands who sell through retail. For example, we make the sunscreen under a brand’s name, which you might then find on the shelf in Target or CVS. As I’ve optimized our pages, I’ve attempted to go long-tail, which has been simply to add “…contract packaging” or a variation after the particular product. So, instead of trying to compete in “sunscreen”, which would pit me against big-box distributors and prominent brands and sellers of sunscreen, I’ve optimized for “sunscreen manufacturers.” “Sunscreen” has 31K – 72K searches, with an 81 Difficulty and 67 Potential. “Sunscreen manufacturers” has a low 13 Difficulty and a decent 54 Potential, but only 51 – 100 searches. Some of my terms have only 0 – 10 searches, but I’ve been thinking that it’s better to compete for fewer but more qualified / buyer-intent searches and have generally lower Difficulty. Can you please tell me if this is a smart strategy, or if I should instead try to compete in higher-volume terms but much greater Difficulty? Thanks a lot for everyone's help.
On-Page Optimization | | Beau_W0 -
Duplicate Content - Bulk analysis tool?
Hi I wondered if there's a tool to analyse duplicate content - within your own site or on external sites, but that you can upload the URL's you want to check in bulk? I used Copyscape a while ago, but don't remember this having a bulk feature? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | BeckyKey0 -
Linking Out To External Sites
Hi, All If I have created a (website, logo, email campaign) for a client and written an article about it with screen shots on my website and link to them with a (do-follow) link how does Google see the (do-follow) link? Regards to the sites they have one link in the footer on the home page, which is a (do-follow) back to our site. Also, the websites are not in my Niche.
On-Page Optimization | | deskjet0 -
Does the link title attribute benefit seo?
Hello, Anyone could tell me the benefit SEO of link title attribute. Is **Link Title **ranking factor? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh0 -
Link anchor text in list menus
Obviously Google likes descriptive anchor text. At least the first version on the page. But suppose you had a list of scrap yard depots on a hover site menu, would you go for the person friendly nested list, so Scrap Yard Depots Newcastle Chester Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch Or the presumably more Google friendly; Scrap Yard Depots Newcastle Scrap Yard Chester Scrap Yard Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch Scrap Yard
On-Page Optimization | | JamesFx0 -
Good Internal Site Structure Idea?
Hello SEOMoz, After reading a bunch of your Site Structure articles, I've decided to make ours more flat. There are numerous pages on our site which are linked to directly from our homepage, wasting mysterious amounts of Link Juice every day. I want to remove most of these links so that the Fewer, and now more heavily weighted, Homepage Links will be more powerful... but I am worried that the pages which I am knocking down to the 3rd tier level already have high rank and are distributing this Juice to other pages. The problem is that 3 of these 9 pages are great for assisting our sales team, so I cannot take those 2 links off of the homepage...so I will be forced to Nofollow them instead. I am worried this is cutting down the number of pages on the site, also cutting out content which was previously indexed. Is this whole thing a good idea at all? And should I just leave those 2 pages alone because I can't remove the link? I'm thinking maybe I should rel=canonical it back to the homepage? I am ultimately trying to rank the homepage for the keyword "POS Software" and this is my on-site strategy for it. Maybe adding a link from those 2 pages that say "POS Software" back to the homepage is the best bet in this scenario? I am trying to learn the absolute best thing to do instead of guessing. Thanks! Derek
On-Page Optimization | | DerekM880 -
Too many on-page links
I manualy counted the links on my website http://www.commensus.com which came to around 50, but SEO moz says I have over 100 and google isn't seeing them all.
On-Page Optimization | | jawl44630