Can I reduce number of on page links by just adding "no follow" tags to duplicate links
-
Our site works on templates and we essentially have a link pointing to the same place 3 times on most pages. The links are images not text.
We are over 100 links on our on page attributes, and ranking fairly well for key SERPS our core pages are optimized for.
I am thinking I should engage in some on-page link juice sculpting and add some "no follow" tags to 2 of the 3 repeated links.
Although that being said the Moz's on page optimizer is not saying I have link cannibalization.
Any thoughts guys? Hope this scenario makes sense.
-
Hey Alex,
Hit the "oak furniture" analogy on the head there. I could go through our core pages disabling the canalizing link. So the Oak furniture didn't work on the oak page because the user is already there.
The CMS is reliable and a little FUGLY I can't get a nice font to work and align how I want so resorted to images.
How much of an edge do you think we are missing because of this issue? can you quantify it?Essentially this is not going to boost usability massively, just sculpt link juice hopefully.
-
Do you mean keyword cannibalisation - where different pages are targeting the same keyword? You have numerous pages where the main key phrase in the title tag and elsewhere on-page includes "oak furniture" for example.
I don't have much experience with CMS's so apologies if my question sounds a bit dumb, is it not as simple as selecting a default size and font like Arial or Helvetica?
-
I agree Alex the problem comes with link cannibalization. As the site works from templates there is a lot of variation with how the text renders across browsers so from a user point of view and with all the issues with w3c validation images were the best way to go.
Its a toss up between the links looking ugly and link juice.
-
Again, if you think it will benefit the human user. I'm hesitant to give more specific advice when I haven't seen the site in question. You can always take advantage of image alt attributes if you're not already.
EDIT - if you're talking about The Furniture Market, the navigation links on the left and top would definitely be better as text.
-
From our home page we have all image links to our core pages, maybe I should add some exact match anchor text links to our core pages from there you mean?
It's an old CMS we are on but I still think I can squeeze some extra performance out of it.
-
Not necessarily - the 100 links is just a warning - not an error. I can't speak for SEOmoz but I think that number comes from the days when search engine crawlers weren't so sophisticated; the likes of Google have no problem crawling a lot of on page links now. If it would make it a better user experience to remove some links, then go ahead.
This is an old post - be aware that in most situations it's probably only the anchor text of the first repeated link that counts - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/results-of-google-experimentation-only-the-first-anchor-text-counts - so that's a possibility for improving your link optimisation. Another way to optimise your site using links is to be aware that links in body text have a higher value than those in sidebars and footers - it's a good way to link to other internal content.
-
Hey Alex,
So you would go for more of a 'link amputation' approach ?
-
I'd say it's not worth it these days; if you add nofollow to a link, the link juice disappears completely, e.g. if you have 10 followed links on a page (and 10 links in total), they'll each get 10% of the link juice. If you make 1 of those 10 links nofollow, the other 9 links will still only get the same amount of link juice - 10% will be lost completely to the nofollow. It used to be the case where the link juice was shared between the number of followed links, but not any more.
Edit - check out this from Matt Cutts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVOOB_Q0MZY
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
-
How can I avoid duplicate content for a new landing page which is the same as an old one?
Hello mozers! I have a question about duplicate content for you... One on my clients pages have been dropping in search volume for a while now, and I've discovered it's because the search term isn't as popular as it used to be. So... we need to create a new landing page using a more popular search term. The page which is losing traffic is based on the search query "Can I put a solid roof on my conservatory" this only gets 0-10 searches per month according to the keyword explorer tool. However, if we changed this to "replacing conservatory roof with solid roof" this gets up to 500 searches per month. Muuuuch better! The issue is, I don't want to close down and re-direct the old page because it's got a featured snippet and sits in position 1. So I'd like to create another page instead... however, as the two are effectively the same content, I would then land myself in a duplicate content issue. If I were to put a rel="canonical" tag in the original "can I put a solid roof...." page but say the master page is now the new one, would that get around the issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Virginia-Girtz0 -
Can an "Event" in Structured Data For Google Be A Webinar?
I have a client who is has structured data for live business webinars. Google's documentation seems to talk more about music and tickets than this kind of thing. At the same time, we get an error in search console for "Name" and location, which they list as "webinar." Should I removed this failed structured data attempt or is there a way to fix it? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
980 links from 75 domains and Graded "A" on Moz Page Grader-- still not ranking for our term. Thoughts?
A few additional interesting details: A blog post we wrote with the same keyword ranks 8, but this page does not crack the top 20. Crazy competitive term-- top SERP are from HBR, Entrepreneur and Inc. We use Instapage as landing page builder-- could this effect our rankings? URL is not a subdomain Pretty stumped over here. Thanks y'all!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lbernes220 -
"noindex, follow" or "robots.txt" for thin content pages
Does anyone have any testing evidence what is better to use for pages with thin content, yet important pages to keep on a website? I am referring to content shared across multiple websites (such as e-commerce, real estate etc). Imagine a website with 300 high quality pages indexed and 5,000 thin product type pages, which are pages that would not generate relevant search traffic. Question goes: Does the interlinking value achieved by "noindex, follow" outweigh the negative of Google having to crawl all those "noindex" pages? With robots.txt one has Google's crawling focus on just the important pages that are indexed and that may give ranking a boost. Any experiments with insight to this would be great. I do get the story about "make the pages unique", "get customer reviews and comments" etc....but the above question is the important question here.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi50 -
Links from non-indexed pages
Whilst looking for link opportunities, I have noticed that the website has a few profiles from suppliers or accredited organisations. However, a search form is required to access these pages and when I type cache:"webpage.com" the page is showing up as non-indexed. These are good websites, not spammy directory sites, but is it worth trying to get Google to index the pages? If so, what is the best method to use?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maxweb0 -
How are PDF image alt tags and "subject" field in document properties used for search
Hello, 1. Does google use image alt tags? According to this 2011 document, the answer is no, but I have seen others claiming yes- has google since begun using alt tags for images within PDFs? http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pdfs-in-google-search-results.html I am trying to decide if it is worth updating existing PDFs with alt tags for images for the purpose of SEO. 2. How does Google use the "Subject" field in document properties for a PDF? Should it be used as a description field for the document, similar to a meta description? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | winstoncho0 -
No index.no follow certain pages
Hi, I want to stop Google et al from finding a some pages within my website. the url is www.mywebsite.com/call_backrequest.php?rid=14 As these pages are creating a lot of duplicate content issues. Would the easiest solution be to place a 'Nofollow/Noindex' META tag in page www.mywebsite.com/call_backrequest.php many thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wood1e19680 -
Do Outbound NoFollow Links Reduce the Page's Ability to Pass PageRank?
I get the recent change where adding a nofollow to one link wont increase the juice passed to other links. I'm wondering if nofollow still passes link-juice into the void. i.e. if a page has $10 of link-juice and has one link then regardless of whether this link is follow or nofollow will the page will leak the same juice? Specifically, Is this site benefitting from having a nofollow on the links in it's car buyer's checklist: http://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/used-cars/mitsubishi/diamante/auction-480341592.htm
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seomoz8steer0