How can I reduce the number of links on a page and keep the site easy to navigate?
-
The SEOmoz Site Crawl indicates that we have too many on page links on over 9,970 pages. This is an ecommerce site with a large number of categories. I have a couple of questions regarding this issue:
-
How important is the "too many on page links" factor to SEO?
-
What are some methods of reducing the number of links when there are a large number of categories? We have main categories with dropdown menus currently and have found that they are used to browse and shop the store.
-
-
Thanks. Forgot about the 2nd Twitter link. The 2nd FB link actually allows a visitor to signup for the email list and actually does get used, but differently than the FB icon.
We removed the subcategory links from the Decor section as well. This cuts down quite a bit on the number of links. Thanks for your suggestions.
-
I believe there are just 2 links each to FB and Twitter - one at the top and one at the bottom.
I noticed in the top there are the "f" and "t" icons which each link to facebook and twitter respectively. In addition, there is the "@NantucketBrand which is a twitter link, and "Facebook instantly" which is a facebook link. It's ok to have these variations if they are helpful and visitors use them. I point them out mainly because they may not be used or there may be confusion as to how they are used compared to the normal "f" and "t' icons.
-
Ryan - Thanks for taking a look.
I believe there are just 2 links each to FB and Twitter - one at the top and one at the bottom. I'll make sure that gets down to 1 link each.
The addresses are linked to help fix some local listings. We've had some trouble with incorrect info in Google Places.
That's a good idea about the links in the decor section. Seems like a good compromise to allow most items to be found easily but still eliminate some links.
Thanks again for taking for you help!
-
I would again suggest reviewing your Analytics to see which links on your page actually receive clicks. Consider removing unused links. A few specifics:
-
You have 3 links to your facebook and twitter each. Two links in the upper-right header area, and one in the footer. Perhaps one link to each in the header is enough?
-
You offer multiple links to an external site (list-manage1.com) for your mailing list signup. Consider consolidating to a single link and offer this function internally.
-
Your footer offers a separate link to Google maps for each location. I see the value of this setup IF the links are actually used. These links appear on every page of your site so if they are not being used, you may wish to remove them.
-
The only other area I question is the Nautical Decor & Gifts sub-categories. There are 25 of them. If your analytics shows those categories are all being used, I would keep them. Otherwise, you may wish to consider consolidating some of them, or removing the sub-categories all together and having users click through to the main category page which then offers those sub-categories.
I can't tell for certain but it seems your main focus is clothing, and those gifts are more of an additional offerings type of thing. If that is the case, those 25 links are taking a lot of PR away from the more important areas of your site, as those links are offered on every page.
-
-
Sure - http://bit.ly/mP3PGv
Not sure about the usual way of sharing links here.
-
If you are willing to share a link to your site, we can offer a more specific evaluation. Otherwise we are offering vague generalities which may or may not apply to your situation.
-
Thanks for the replies. No social media widget - just 1 link to our page on a couple of sites.
Most of the links are for the category and sub-category navigation. There are some footer links that could be combined and some tag cloud links that should just be removed.
I am thinking about whether all the sub-category navigation should be removed. The menus could just contain the main categories. Once those are clicked on, the sub-categories on listed anyway.
-
Adding to Ryans post:
The amount of links is one thing to consider, but also consider the depth of your site, that is: how many clicks does it take to reach any given page. Use a crawler like Xenus link sleuth and crawl your site. You should look into anything over 4 or 5, depending on the amount of pages.For an ecommerce site i wouldn't worry about the 100 links per page warning, but 200 visible links are too much. Best thing to do is too look at every object of a page (links, images, buttons, badeges etc.) and ask yourself whether it is really necessary or dead weight. Reduce as much as possible.
Nearly forgot to ask you: are you using some sort of social media widget? These little buggers sometimes contain links to tons of sites, thus increasing link count. There used to be an addon for firefox called link grab! which printed out a list of all links on a page.
-
How important is the "too many on page links" factor to SEO?
The "too many links" warning is set to alert you on any page with over 100 links. The importance of this warning depends on your site and SEO goals.
There are two general guidelines I would suggest for evaluating your site:
1. Review your site's analytics reports to determine which links are not used. If users are not using the links, you should highly consider removing the link, or at least making some change to the link which would help users find it. Maybe you increase the font size, change the color or move the location.
2. Understand links control the flow of PR throughout your site. You want to use links to help direct visitors to pages which are more useful for users, or perhaps more profitable for you. You do not want necessarily want to provide a link to every area of your site on each page. The links should be helpful and relevant.
Let's say you have a used car site. You do not want to provide a link to every conceivable category possibility from your home page. If you did you would have hundreds of categories representing every manufacturer, every make, every model, every year, every vehicle type (SUV, pickup truck, economy car, sports car, etc.). It's far too much.
Determine a logical breakdown and keep your links to a minimum. You want to make things easy for users. Putting 200+ links on a page makes it very difficult for users to find what they really want.
One method of reducing links is to not offer all the sub-categories, especially when they drop down to 3rd and 4th tier choices. Another method of reducing links is to combine pages. Perhaps you offer links to "About Us", "Contact Us", "Privacy Policy", etc. You could consider combining several pages into one and thereby reducing your links.
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 we get follow links from Pinterest and Instagram
While using Open Site Explorer from Moz I came across follow links from Instagram and Pinterest. Now my question is how can we get follow links from Pinterest and Instagram
Moz Pro | | rakesh10 -
Opens Site Explorer sees two pages that are one
www.mysite.com/ and www.mysite.com/default.asp are both showing up in open site explorer. How do I make sure that these are not being interpreted as two pages when they are the same page? (Both in search engines and OSE.)
Moz Pro | | EugeneF0 -
Why does it keep displaying br tags and claiming 404 errors on like 4 of my URL's for all my Wordpress sites?
Is anyone else having the same issue? These errors don't actually exist and i think it has something to do with wordpress - how can i fix this?
Moz Pro | | MillerPR0 -
On Page Grading Not Working
I am not getting any results in on page grading. When I click on add keywords a list of keywords appears that I have previously entered. They have tick boxes next to them and you can filter them but SEO moz is not automtically creating grade reports? Any ideas? Obviously I've set it up wrong somehow.
Moz Pro | | SamCUK0 -
Advanced Link Report Different Link # than Total Links??
Hi, I've downloaded a csv report for links in "advanced reports" section. At the very top in blue OSE lists overall metrics, i.e. Domain Auth, Page Auth, Linking Root Domains, and then it lists "Total Links" at 1,769. When I download the advanced report in csv I have 505 total links in Excel. Why is there a difference between Total Links and what I have downloaded? What makes up the Total Links? The report I created included, "inbound links/linking pages, Types of Links: any; Links that come from: Any Page, Any IP; Links that link to: any page on subdomain; links with properties: any; Thanks!
Moz Pro | | toby-020 -
In my crawl diagnostics, there are links to duplicate content. How can I track down where these links originated in?
How can I find out how SEOMOz found these links to begin with? That would help fix the issue. Where's the source page where the link was first encountered listed at?
Moz Pro | | kirklandsl0 -
Why doesn't Open Site Explorer recognize the link from my twitter profile?
When I run a report on my competition I'm seeing their link show up in OSE's report under the "Linking Domains" tab, but when I put my site in there, it doesn't recognize my link from my twitter profile. Any ideas?
Moz Pro | | shawn811 -
Why would PA be 1 (0 links from 0 root domains) if it's linked to internally?
Question just about said it all: I've seen a number of pages on sites that have a PA of 1 (with the metrics being 0 links from 0 root domains) when I can see on the site that it is linked to internally - from the main nav (which is CSS, not Javascript) and also from the footer, if not other places. Why would this be? Update: upon looking further at the site, it appears that there's some kind of redirect going on, where the page linked to from the nav actually redirects to the real page. Would that eliminate PA, even if it's a 301? And additionally, is whatever is causing this lack of PA a reflection of how Google would relate to the page? Thanks, Aviva
Moz Pro | | debi_zyx0