Link Architecture - Xenu Link Sleuth Vs Manual Observation Confusion
-
Hi,
I have been asked to complete some SEO contracting work for an e-commerce store.
The Navigation looked a bit unclean so I decided to investigate it first.
a) Manual Observation
Within the catalogue view, I loaded up the page source and hit Ctrl-F and searched "href", turns out there's 750 odd links on this page, and most of the other sub catalogue and product pages also have about 750 links.
Ouch! My SEO knowledge is telling me this is non-optimal.
b) Link Sleuth
I crawled the site with Xenu Link Sleuth and found 10,000+ pages. I exported into Open Calc and ran a pivot table to 'count' the number of pages per 'site level'. The results looked like this -
Level Pages
0 1
1 42
2 860
3 3268
Now this looks more like a pyramid. I think is is because Link Sleuth can only read 1 'layer' of the Nav bar at a time - it doesnt 'hover' and read the rest of the nav bar (like what can be found by searching for "href" on the page source).
Question: How are search spiders going to read the site? Like in (1) or in (2).
Thankyou!
-
Well, external links to pages are 80% of the ranking factor for the page. That has nothing to do with your internal nav link structure. But, yes, internal juice will flow 1/750th to each page that the nav structure points to.
-
From an SEO perspective, what about inbound links to the catalogue page? Wont the link power be spread over 750 links and then making the sub sub sub catalogue pages as equally powerful as the sub catalogue pages?
It just seems "the spread of juice" will not be pyramidal.
-
Yikes. 750 links (even if split into sections so you don't see them all at once) on 1 page is not 'human-friendly' (as I know you know). Is that really necessary? I looked at the site and having navigation sub-menus that go 4-deep is kind of a usability issue for people that aren't great with a mouse. Maybe look at ebay's menu structure; they certainly have a large db of products in many categories and don't resort to 100s of links per page just for navigation.
But from and SEO point of view I'm not sure the 750 links are hurting your on-page ranking for a phrase that the page is otherwise optimized for. If you had a page optimized for "widgets" and you did all the correct on-page things for 'widgets' and then had external links pointing to the page with anchor text of 'widgets' then I'm not sure how much you'd be penalized for having 750 links on that page. Given that on-page factors are only about 20% of the ranking equation anyway, I'm not sure it's a huge deal from an SEO/ranking point of view. It's more of a human usability thing, IMO.
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
-
Https vs Http Link Equity
Hi Guys, So basically have a site which has both HTTPs and HTTP versions of each page. We want to consolidate them due to potential duplicate content issues with the search engines. Most of the HTTP pages naturally have most of the links and more authority then the HTTPs pages since they have been around longer. E.g. the normal http hompage has 50 linking root domains while the https version has 5. So we are a bit concerned of adding a rel canonical tag & telling the search engines that the preferred page is the https page not the http page (where most of the link equity and social signals are). Could there potentially be a ranking loss if we do this, what would be best practice in this case? Thanks, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Link building… how to get high rewarding links?
Hi Guys, I have a few people whom I have built relationships up in my industry with that would like to link to my site. Is there any particular things I need to be mindful of before having them link to me? I'm just mindful of the unknown. Also, which links to use etc? Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
Cooking Recipes Blog Links
Hi, I am running an ecommerce store - cookware, bakeware, knives etc... I have someone I know personally that is a writer and one of her blogs is about cooking - lots of well established articles with keywords througout. Is there any harm in getting some inbound links from her blog on certain keywords? If so, should I limit the number of outgoing links per article she has? Any guidelines? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
100 + links on a scrolling page
Can you add more than 100 links on your webpage If you have a webpage that adds more content from a database as a visitor scrolls down the page. If you look at the page source the 100 + links do not show up, only the first 20 links. As you scroll down it adds more content and links to the bottom of the page so its a continuos flowing page if you keep scrolling down. Just wanted to know how the 100 links maximum fits into this scenario ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jlane90 -
What url should i link to?
Hi everybody, after some discussions i decided to keep my page on the old domain for better seo rankings; However, the new third level domain sounds better: poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it.... the question is: i'm going to recive a high value link and i don't know if i should link directly to the old adress ( www.zenucchi.it/ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.it ) where the page is located or to the new one by making a 301 redirect to the previous. what's best? and second question what's the way to keep the page on this adress ( www.zenucchi.it/ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.it ) but show poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it as url? thank you guido
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidoboem0 -
The missing link?
Hello and Welcome Moz friends! Thanks for taking the time to look at my problem. On my website I've optimized our content to match the keywords I have selected for the site. I constantly am Re-writing articles, reading SEOMoz on tips and tricks how to make link juice flow. Yet only one of my keywords ranks decently, the rest never show up. I have the hardest time getting traffic to my site, and sales after that. Maybe I am implementing something incorrectly or there is something I am not doing. www.FrontlineMobility.com If you have any tips or anything to give me I would gladly accept it, any criticism is also appreciated. Thank you Friends, hopefully you can help me.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FrontlineMobility0 -
Link Request Email on Site`s Link Pages
Hello I have assembled a list of web-sites that have "Links" section that has a list of persons` favorite tools. Those pages have a link to my competitor. I know my tool is just as good if not better and want to request a link. I`m thinking of sending an email asking for a link and offering a small amount of money for it. Questions: A) How much should I offer? Should I offer anything at all B) Is there an email style that someone can suggest that has been tested and proven to work for this type of situtation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hellopotap0 -
Switching to masked affiliate links
Hi there, I run a content affiliate website where I introduce products in articles and then link to merchants where the user can buy the respective product. Currently I am using regular affiliate links here with the "nofollow" attribute. With growing size of the site, I would like to switch to masked affiliate links, so instead of a link like "jdoqocy.com/click-123" I want to use "mydomain.com/recommend/123". My question here is: When switching to masked affiliate links, does it makes sense to also convert all the older unmasked affiliate links? If yes, what would be the best way to do that - Convert all old links at once or convert them over time (e.g. over a few month)? Currently about 2/3 of my site's outbound links are unmasked, external affiliate links. So I am afraid that changing this relatively large share of links from unmasked external affiliate links to masked links doenst look natural at all... Thank you for your advice!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FabRag0