Too many on page links
-
Hi
I know previously it was recommended to stick to under 100 links on the page, but I've run a crawl and mine are over this now with 130+
How important is this now? I've read a few articles to say it's not as crucial as before.
Thanks!
-
Hi Becky!
First, I would like to say this is it great you are being proactive in making sure your webpage doesn't have too many links on it! But, luckily for you, this is not something you need to worry about. 100 is a suggested number but not something that will penalize you if you go over.
Google’s Matt Cutts posted a video explaining why Google no longer has that 100-links-per-page Webmaster guideline—so be sure to check that out! It's commonly thought that having too many links will negatively impact your SEO results, but that hasn't been the case since 2008. However, Google has said if a site looks to be spammy and has way too many links on a single page—Google reserves the right to take action on the site. So, don't include links that could be seen as spammy and you should be fine.
Check out this Moz blog that discusses how many links is too many for more information!
-
Thank you for the advice, I'll take a look at the articles
Brilliant, the round table sounds great - I'll sign up for this
-
I honestly wouldn't worry Becky. The page looks fine, the links look fine and it is certainly not what you would call spammy,
Link crafting was a 'thing' a number of years ago, but today Google pretty much ignores this, as has been shown many times in testing.
However, you can benefit from internal links, but that is a different discussion. Read this if you are interested.
If you are interested, there is a round-table discussion on eCommerce SEO hosted by SEMrush on Thursday and that could be useful to you? Myself and 2 others will be talking on a number of issues.
-Andy
-
Thanks for the advice, I've looked into this before.
We have menu links and product links as it's an ecommerce site, so I wouldn't be able to remove any of these.
I've found it hard to find a way to decrease these links further on primary pages. For example http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/aluminium-sack-truck has 130 links.
Any advice would be appreciated
-
Confirmation from Google here to limit the links on a page to 3000
https://www.deepcrawl.com/knowledge/news/google-webmaster-hangout-notes-friday-8th-july-2016/
I would consider that to be a lot though
-Andy
-
Brilliant thank you!
-
In the "old days" (yup, I go back that far), Google's search index crawler wasn't all that powerful. So it would ration itself on each page and simply quit trying to process all the content on the page after a certain number of links and certain character count. (That's also why it used to be VERY important that your content was close to the top of your page code, not buried at the bottom of the code).
The crawler has been beefed up to the point where this hasn't been a limiting factor per page for a long time, so the crawler will traverse pretty well any links you feed it. But I +1 both Andy and Mike's advice about considering the usability and link power dilution of having extensive numbers of links on a page. (This is especially important to consider for your site's primary pages, since one of their main jobs is to help flow their ranking authority down to important/valuable second-level pages.)
Paul
-
Hi Becky,
Beyond the hypothetical limit, would be the consideration of dividing the link authority of the page by a really large number of links and therefor decreasing the relative value of each of those links to the pages they link to.
Depending on the page holding all these links, user experience, purpose of linked-to pages, etcetera, this may or may not be a consideration, but worth thinking about.
Good luck!
- Mike
-
Hi Becky,
If the links are justified, don't worry. I have clients with 3-400 and no problems with their positions in Google.
That doesn't mean to say it will be the same case for everyone though - each site is different and sometimes you can have too many, but just think it through and if you come to the conclusion that most of the links aren't needed and are stuffing keywords in, then look to make changes.
But on the whole, it doesn't sound like an issue to me - there are no hard and fast rules around this.
-Andy
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
-
Is a page with links to all posts okay?
Hi folks. Instead of an archive page template in my theme (I have my reasons), I am thinking of simply typing the post title as and when I publish a post, and linking to the post from there. Any SEO issues that you can think of? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nobody16165422281340 -
Link title tags on devices - product category page
I saw that any big page doesn't have a title tag on the product link on the category page. Title tag has any advantages on internal links?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tormar0 -
First Link on Page Still Only Link on Page?
Bruce Clay and others did some research and found that the first link on the page is the most important and what is accredited as the link. Any other links on the page mean nothing. Is this still true? And in that case, on an ecommerce site with category links in the top navigation (which is high on the code), is it not useful to link to categories in the content of the page? Because the category is already linked to on that page. Thank you, Tyler
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
Do I need to use rel="canonical" on pages with no external links?
I know having rel="canonical" for each page on my website is not a bad practice... but how necessary is it for pages that don't have any external links pointing to them? I have my own opinions on this, to be fair - but I'd love to get a consensus before I start trying to customize which URLs have/don't have it included. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Netrepid0 -
Optimize the category page or a content page?
Hi, We wish to start ranking on a specific keyword ("log house prices" in italian). We have two options on what pages we should optimize for this keyword: A long content page (1000+ words with images) Log houses category page, optimized for the keyword (we have 50+ houses on this page, together with a short price summary). I would think that we have better chances with ranking with option nr.2 , but then we can't use that page for ranking with a more short-tail keyword (like "log houses"). What would you suggest? Is there maybe a third option for this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohanMattisson0 -
Rel canonical on every page, pointing to home page
I've just started working with a client and have been surprised to find that every page of their site (using Concrete5 CMS) has a rel=canonical pointing to their home page. I'm feeling really dumb, because this seems like a fatal flaw which would keep Google from ranking any page other than the home page... but when I look at Google Analytics, Content > Site Content > Landing Pages, using Secondary Dimension = Source, it seems that Google is delivering users to numerous pages on their site. Can anyone help me out?! Thanks very much!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | measurableROI0 -
Link Juice Vs. Page Rank
What is better from an SEO point of view a Page with Page Rank of 5 with 0 clicks linking to your site or a page with a Page Rank of 3 with 1000 clicks linking back to your site? Is link juice important? do search engines count Link Juice?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEODinosaur0 -
Are duplicate links on same page alright?
If I have a homepage with category links, is it alright for those category links to appear in the footer as well, or should you never have duplicate links on one page? Can you please give a reason why as well? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dkamen0