Too Many on page links on my homepage question?
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Question, on moz analytics, for my homepage, I've gotten the " Too many on page links" notification every crawl. I've always ignored it because i didnt think it affected ranking or anything really. The on page links on the bottom of our homepage are landing pages. Most users reach those pages by searching those specific pages on google. We just decided to put them on the bottom of our page for unknown reasons.
My question is, should i remove the landing pages on the bottom of our homepage? WIll it improve search rankings for my homepage? if i do remove them, should i put the landing pages on another page besides the homepage? Does google index my website better without the on page links on my homepage?
My website is- prestigeluxuryrentals.com
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Well, the point of a landing page is that visitors go directly to an offer of some sort from SERPs. That tends me toward suggesting you remove it from each page. However, you've already had them there for what I expect is a while. So it might be harmful or tricky to do that.
Generally speaking, if you want to make a change that you're either unsure of, or that might have a large impact, you want to start by taking small steps rather than do it in one fell swoop. My overall suggestion is that you remove one or two of the landing page links from your homepage, and check reporting after a couple of weeks. If it went well, then EITHER remove that same one or two landing page links from all bottoms of your pages, OR remove a few more landing page links from your homepage.
I can't stress enough that you don't want to do both. That might make too big an impact. But it all boils down to a consensus between what you should do and what your boss will allow.
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Bryan i decided to test from one of our landing pages that is ranked number one. I have another question. Should i remove it from everywhere on the website and have it just in one section?
If you navigate through our website, you'll see that the landing pages are at the bottom of every page.
Should i put it under the locations tab or should i put it on the location page only?
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I would actually suggest setting up events and triggers in Google Analytics for that. You may also want to do some A/B testing to see if that's the case. If you can afford to, try removing a couple of those links and see how that affects traffic for the homepage, and those landing pages. That way if your boss is correct in saying that they're beneficial, removing them won't have too strong an impact.
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i meant to tag you on the response below. Feel free to answer. Thanks
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Hi Donford and Bryan, thanks for you reply. I told my boss this and he was hesitant in removing the landing pages from the homepage because he thinks that those landing pages are maybe receiving traffic from the homepage. Thus, it could be one of the reasons those pages rank high. How can i check on MOZ if my landing pages receive traffic from home page or search engines.
In regards to the Facebook Customer section, i will asap. Thanks
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Hello,
To answer the question, the footer links are likely not serving any purpose on your homepage. Based on a couple factors, one you stated most traffic is coming on the landing pages, and second links that are in the footer and pages with over 100+ links pass little link authority to each of the corresponding pages.
There really is only one legitimate reason to keep more then 100+ links on any given page. That would be user experience. But as you say people aren't actually arriving on your homepage, and even if so they could easily get to a location page from your top navigation. I would say, remove them.
Bryan touched on the FB issue.. so I will touch on one that I would personally turn me off (since we are talking about user experiences). That is the "Trust Tags" in your footer. They are not links, they are simply images. Had I stumbled upon the site and noticed that, I would have simply left without investigating it further. It is as if you are trying to trick me into saying yes we are GeoTrust, Authorize.net. ExoticCarRental verified, but we aren't able to prove it. All those logos should be links to third party verifications.
Hope it helps,
Don
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Nowadays, Google doesn't really care about footer links all that much. And I agree with your reports - there are WAY too many links on your homepage. I'd remove all or at least most of the "locations we service" links, and instead, move them to a navigational menu item - either in a sidebar or at the top. You could even just have a "Locations" page with a small excerpt about each area and a link to them from there. Either option would be preferable to having so many footer links to smaller pages.
I also see that on your "customer reviews" section, each person's name links to their Facebook profile. I'd suggest removing those links for a few reasons. First, it's more links on your homepage (and Facebook will have disavowed them anyway). Second, these customers may put very unprofessional things in their profiles, so you may not want to direct visitors to their pages.
I hope that helps!
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