Internal link structure for large site
-
I am working on a very large directory site which is undergoing a complete redesign. I am considering the internal link structure from first principles. When a site has over 100,000 pages, how do you ensure that each page is linked to from somewhere so that there are no orphans? Trying to get my head around the structure makes my brain hurt. Any tips?
-
Thanks, I'll give that a try
-
Hey EGOL, thanks. I've actually not thought about it for articles! Perhaps we could share an example with each other?
-
I use MindJet for outlining long articles. I never thought about it for planning link structure but would probably work well. Good thinking.
-
Hey Jennifer,
I agree with EGOL completely. I like to use Mindjet Manager for doing that kinda of work, although- 100,000 pages would be a bit rough. Just in case you think some may have been left out, this post by Richard Baxter about finding orphan pages can help you diagnose and find them.
-
Draw a diagram that looks like a branching tree.
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
-
Too many on-page links
Hi, I've apparently got too many on-page links on 79 of my webpages. The majority of these pages are category pages, like this: https://www.turnkeymortgages.co.uk/mortgage-advice/mortgages/... so, what's a person to do? Obviously the page would be useless without the links. Should I just ignore these 'errors'? Or is there something else I should do? I don't want to appear manipulative by labelling them nofollow... Thanks, Amelia
On-Page Optimization | | CommT0 -
Too many page links warning... but each link has canonical back to main page? Is my page OK?
The Moz crawl warns me many of my pages have too many links, like this page http://www.webjobz.com/jobs/industry/Accounting ...... has 269 links but many of the links are like this /jobs/jobtitles/Accounting?k=&w=3&hiddenLocationID=463170&depth=2 and are used to refine search criteria.... when you click on those links they all have a canonical link back to http://www.webjobz.com/jobs/industry/Accounting Is my page being punished for this? Do I have to put "no follow" tags on every link I do not want the bots to follow and if I do so is Roger (moz bot) not going to count this as a link?
On-Page Optimization | | Webjobz0 -
Site structure suggestions/feedback
I asked this on Reddit and got some some decent answers. I'm curious to see what the pro's of SEOmoz think. I've got a lead generation site for forklift parts--liftxparts.com. You can think of it similar to car parts, where we have sections for specific brands (e.x. Toyota forklift parts) and sections for specific categories (e.x. forklift filters). Right now, the site is structured in two main levels: the top level is a dozen or so brands (separate pages for Toyota forklift parts, Clark forklift parts, etc), and then the second level is the categories (separate pages for a dozen or so different categories like forklift filters, forklift engine parts, etc.).If you check out one of the pages, like Clark forklift parts for example (our top landing page)--liftxparts.com/clark-forklift-parts.html, you'll see that on the brand pages (they're all structured the same), we list all the different categories (with links to the same second level category pages) and "search" buttons. All pages point to the same lead capture form.This has been working pretty well--about 90% of visitors end up on our lead capture form, and a high percentage of those convert. We're working on increasing organic traffic now and I'm thinking our structure could use some improvement.Looking at the analytics, there are a lot more impressions for keywords like "clark forklift" than "clark forklift parts". One gap I've uncovered is while our average position, and by extension CTR and traffic, for phrases like "clark forklift parts" is quite good, it's not so good for broader and higher searched terms like "clark forklift". Should we add another level of hierarchy targeted to just general brands? So now we have content for clark forklift parts, but should we add a page for terms like "clark forklift"? Or should we just add some broader content to the existing brand pages? The pages are quite long already, I'm afraid adding more content to the bottom of the page isn't very functional. Our thinking is that we can increase average position for higher searched terms by adding content targeted to those terms. The question is how exactly to go about it and how to work it into our current site structure? Any feedback related to our site structure or even just related ideas about other ways to approach our goal of increasing organic traffic would be very much appreciated! Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | wisamabdulla0 -
Too many links
My site index has recently showed up during crawl - with a warning of too many links (885). Should I be adding the no follow tag to this page? Wall Quotes, Vinyl Wall Quotes, Family Sayings, Baby Boy Quotes http://www.enchantingquotes.com/ind.html Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | joziepaige0 -
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 -
Excessive Internal Links & links to same location
Hi, When Google is counting internal links on a page and it comes across two links to the same url, do both of the links count towards Excessive Internal Links? The reason I ask is that on our website we allow users to navigate through the website in different ways (either by dropdown menus or side menu or through breadcrumbs); which cause some links to appear multiple times on the same page. Any thoughts? K.
On-Page Optimization | | soltec0 -
Internal linking
Background; selling childrens clothing (for norwegian market). main page is being optimized barneklær (children clothing) which is most used term. We ve been online for around 3 months and have gone from unranked to 25th spot on google for this term. We are selling clothes from 8 different producers which all have their own 'page' - were all their products are listed. e.g http://www.epleskrinet.no/dundelina/M_13 . This page i am optimizing for the producer which is dundelina. For this term i show up in spot 24, 25 and 44. My problem is that its not the producer page that show up but the 3 most popular products. The producer page isnt ranked at all. What ive done so far is to have to producer link to my page from their site and blog (a week ago) - they were linking to my home page earlier. Ive put anchor text dundelina --> takes me to producer page on 4 out of 7 products. This was also done about a week ago. I am planning a blog about dundelina pointing to the right URL. From our blog I am using. Ive posted a couple of pictures on facebook pointing to right URL. Do i just need to be patient for this to be picked up or is there anything else i should do ? Thanks ... Dan Lærum
On-Page Optimization | | danlae0 -
Three Sites or One?
I have a client who provides three distinct, although related, services. Some of his competitors only provide one of those services, and thus their sites are more saturated with that particular service. Would it be best to develop three different sites optimized for each particular service, or could I achieve the same effect by optimizing different sections of one site for each service?
On-Page Optimization | | kscotbarr0