Can external links in a menu attract a penalty?
-
We have some instances of external links (i.e. pointing to another domain) in site menus.
Although there are legitimate reasons (e.g. linking to a news archive kept on a separate domain) I understand this can be considered bad from a usability perspective.
This begs the question - is this bad for SEO? With the recent panda changes we've seen certain issues which were previously "only" about usability attract SEO penalties, but I can't find any references to this example.
Anyone have thoughts / experience?
-
Yes, this can cause a problem as the links will be classed as unnatural. The best way to get round this is to make sure those links have the rel="nofollow" tag.
The penalty you should be worried about is Penguin, as this will hit pages with overoptimised anchor text links, and a menu link to an external site could generate hundreds, if not thousands of backlinks to another site, so the site you are linking to in that menu could have problems.
There are many instances being posted here of people being hit by penguin because they got featured sidebar links on other sites, resulting in 1000's of backlinks appearing in opensiteexplorer, all with the same optimized anchor text. I liken the menu links to be similar in result.
But like I said, just ensure that the mass menu links to the other site are nofollowed and you should be ok.
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
-
Do we still have this Page Rank / Link juice / Link equity? So this dilution concept?
Hi all, As per the traditional or standard SEO rules, we have this link juice and dilution concept. Many websites have changed their linking structure with this with the beleif "the more number of pages, the PR will get diluted". Then many websites avoided more number of pages from homepage to avoid link juice dilution. Even we followed same. But I just wonder it's still the same way Google handles websites and rankings as per the links. And many websites even avoid more number of 2nd tier/hierarchy pages to avoid link dilution. I have gone through our competitors where they been employing lot of top level pages like 2nd tier/hierarchy pages but still doing good at rankings. Please share your views and suggestions on this. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Footer links on my site... bad for passing page rank?
i've been told that it is possible that google discounts the weight or page rank passed in footer links of websites and my website has the navigation to many of my pages in the footer of each page. My whole website is about 20 pages so each page has links to the 5 most popular pages at the top and the rest of the links are in the footer of each page. Am i losing page rank by having these links in the footer? Should i make my navigation different? I have lots of articles on my site so i thought it might be not only helpful to my readers but give my pages an seo boost if i placed in context links in the body of my articles to other pages of my site. Does this sound like a good idea? Thanks mozzers! Thanks mozzers!
Web Design | | Ron100 -
Too Many Outbound Links on the Home Page - Bad for SEO?
Hello Again Moz community, This is my last Q of the day: I have a LOT of outbound links on the home page of www.web3.ca Some are to clients projects, most are to other pages on the website. Can reducing this to the core pages have a positive impact on SEO? Thanks, Anton
Web Design | | Web3Marketing870 -
Can white text over images hurt your SEO?
Hi everyone, I run a travel website that has about 30 pre-search city landing pages. In a redesign last year we added large "hero" images to the top of the page, and put our h1 headlines on top of them in white. The result is attractive, but I'm wondering if Google could be reading this page as "white text on white page", which is an obvious no-no, especially if it could seem that we're trying to hide text. Here's an example: http://www.eurocheapo.com/paris/ H1: Expert reviews of cheap hotels in Paris I should add that our SERPs for these city pages has dropped (for "Cheap hotels in X"), but it could obviously be related to other issues. Any advice would be appreciated. Many thanks! Tom
Web Design | | TomNYC0 -
Using content from other sites without duplicate content penalties?
Hi there, I am setting up a website, where i believe it would substantially benefit users experience if i setup a database of information on artists. I am torn because to feasibly do this correctly, i would have content that is built from multiple sources, but has no real unique content. It would have parts from Wikipedia, parts from other websites etc. All would be sourced of-course. My concern is that if i do this, am i risking in devaluing my website because of this. Is there a way i can handle this without taking a hit?
Web Design | | BorisD0 -
I am looking to improve my on page seo, can you provide any recommendations or suggestions for how?
I am relatively new to the world of SEO and recently built a new site. I have read as many books as I can to help increase my skill set rapidly, and have attempted to implement the best of what I have learned but I know many of you have been in this arena for a while and I would be extremely appreciative of any suggestions you can offer with regard to on page. Thanks in advance. http://luxuryhomehunt.com - home page http://luxuryhomehunt.com/homes-for-sale/orlando.html - city level http://luxuryhomehunt.com/homes-for-sale/orlando/bay-hill.html - community level
Web Design | | Jdubin0 -
How will it affect my site if i link to a site with adult content?
We are currently working on creating 2 sites for a company, one with no adult content, one with adult content. Will it affect the non adult content site if i link to the other one in terms of Google and being blocked by some internet providers.
Web Design | | MattWheatcroft0 -
Can't figure out what's going on with these strange 403's
The last crawl found a good number of 404's and I can't figure out what's going on. I don't even recognize these links. What's really strange is a few of them high a fairly decent page authority. For instance this one has a PA of 55: http://noahsdad.com/?path=http%3A%2F%2Feurosystems.it%2Fconf_commerciale%2Fimages%2Fdd.gif%3F%3F There are several more like this one also, it seems most of these new ones have "Feurosystems" in the link...I have no idea what that is. Just curious what you guys think is going on, why these are 404'ing, and how to fix it. Thanks. Edit: I took out the "%" from the links and I get this: http://noahsdad.com/?path=http3A2F2Feurosystems.it2Fconf_commerciale2Fimages2Fdd.gif3F3F which takes me to a page on my site. I have no idea what's going on, or what that link is. Hoping someone can chime in because this is strange. Another edit: I just checked out the Google Webmaster's and it looks like these errors are 403's and all started around March 21st. I have no idea what happend on March 21st to start causing all of these errors, but I'd sure like to get it fixed. 🙂
Web Design | | NoahsDad0