Too Many On-Page Links

[JavaManOne]

I'm getting the warning of "Too many on-page links".

I have a number of affiliate marketing sites, all Wordpress, all with sidebars.

In the header navigation bar is a link that offers "reviews" and links to each product/brand. This is not a drop down link but leads to a page with product links.

Also, in the sidebar I have links that also lead to the products/brands. Redundant yes, but in the beginning this seemed to be a good practice in site design.

It would be easy to simply remove the widget that contains the link process in the sidebar. The problem may simply be that the sidebar is the same for every page in the site(s).

Is this hurting total SEO as my sites are all over 95-percent indexed.

One site in particular does very well in traffic and sales so is removing these links potentially going to improve my SEO and ultimately by success?

Thanks,

Don

[JavaManOne]

I will take your advise Ryan. The one site with numerous links was getting a little ugly so I'll let the navbar work for awhile and see what happens. Up to now people tend to find this site through long-tail keywords so the links in the sidebar is a moot subject as far as navigation.

All those warnings spooked me. When I built my first site many moons ago with Dreamweaver and even Frontpage there were tests built in to the software to analyze the site for broken links and a visual of your navigation.

My main site is that old and my linking system worked fine. If this was a real problem wouldn't an extensive sitemap be a problem? That could potentially be link loaded.

And you're absolutely correct - if they are helpful to the users than don't remove them - I always concentrate on ease of navigation for the user and page load speed. If you can't retain the visitor all the links in the world won't help or hinder.

[RyanKent]

I would recommend not removing any link which is useful to users. Don't remove a link in an effort to satisfy a SEO tool's warnings. The tool simply determines "too many links" as any page with over 100 links. It is possible to have a very successful page with 200+ links. There are many factors involved including the page's DA/PA and the useability of the links.

In summary, review your links and remove any links which are not helpful to users or otherwise are unnecessary. If you go over 100 links and get the warning, disregard it. You have investigated the issue and taken the appropriate action.

[JavaManOne]

Hi Kieran, I answer above to Thomas that I may very well stick to the <100 threshold but I doubt if any one site would exceed that.

Thank you for the feedback and link.

[JavaManOne]

Only one site actually had close to 100 links in the sidebar but this also happens to be my most successful site, it's also the oldest.

My backlinking efforts for this site has been extensive also, not so much with the others.

Since these niches have specific products they probably won't reach your threshold of 100 as I delete some products in favor of new ones so the net stays the same.

I will test a little without disrupting the navigation too much. Content is king in my book and I specialize in plenty of original content with matching products. That formula has been working I need to get busy on backlink efforts however.

[JavaManOne]

All the links are unique to each product but because they are redundant I am beginning to remove them. I understand the point of having all pages linked to each other but with the sidebar redundancy and your example I suppose the link juice is better used elsewhere.

I really don't have related articles or most popular since these are niche sites I work very hard for original content to specific products. These aren't thin sites but they were created to provide relevant topics and reference with product that would exactly match the topics.

Adding value in information and driving traffic to the product for a sale. This formula has worked and since my indexing is very good I suppose I wasn't losing much.

The navigation bar is visible and leads users to specific criteria without misleading them.

[RyanKent]

Hi Don.

Think of your link juice as plumbing for your house. Your site has x-amount of water pressure coming in to your home. The links are pipes you create which allow the water (link juice) to flow throughout your site.

Each time you add a new link, the water has to come from somewhere. A tiny bit of water is taken from all the other links on your site so it can flow to the new link. One part of SEO is to ensure all pages on your site are linked so you don't have any island pages. Another important part of SEO is link optimization.

When you provide 50 sidebar links a relatively equal amount of juice flows to each of them.The question you need to answer is, are all those links worthy of an equal amount of attention? Ideally you should maximize the number of links to pages which are highly relevant to users such as "related articles" or "most popular". You can also increase links to your best selling products or services.

Perform some analysis to determine which links are not helpful. As an example, if you offer links to archived articles from 2010 which are hardly used, consider removing those links.

[Thos003]

Don,

There is no set number for page links, but the general rule of thumb I've always used is 100 is the max. Typically I try to stay well below that. You also have to understand that your page rank and site authority will play a part into how many links google will "allow" on a page.

Will removing them improve your SEO and success?  I have heard from individuals that have lowered their link count that their rankings do improve. Really, the best thing to do is test it. If you lose rankings then turn them back on. If you gain rankings then you have your own test positive that links should be limited.

If your site is doing well, then it doesn't sound like your site is hurting too much from your current linking structure. So if you like where you are then you don't have to worry about it. But if you want to improve, you will have to take some risks.

[kdaly100]

Hi Don

The rough (current) rule of thumb seems to be in the 150 range per page.  If yours is really going way beyond this you may need to rethink your plan.

http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/internal-link

Indexation isn't the be all and end all though - you can always redirect them which isn't too bad