Too many on page links
-
Hi All,
As we all know, having to much links on a page is an obstacle for search engine crawlers in terms of the crawl allowance. My category pages are labeled as pages with to many "one page" links by the SEOmoz crawler. This probably comes from the fact that each product on the category page has multiple links (on the image and model number).
Now my question is, would it help to setup a text-link with a clickable area as big as the product area? This means every product gets just one link. Would this help get the crawlers deeper in these pages and distribute the link-juice better? Or is Google smart enough already to figure out that two links to the same product page shouldn't be counted as two?
Thanks for your replies guys.
Rich
-
First off, it's more of a balancing act than a hard/fast rule. I wrote a post about the 100 links "limit" last year, just for reference:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-many-links-is-too-many
Generally, though Expand Online is right - tests seem to show that Google ignores the 2nd, 3rd, etc. link to any Page B from Page A. While we still count those individual links, it shouldn't pose major problems for internal link-juice flow. Google consolidates them, for the most part. It may not be 100%, but it's close enough that you're probably ok in most cases.
It can be very situational, though. In practice, I find the additional links are sometimes unnecessary or even confusing for visitors, so pruning them down is always worth reviewing. I wouldn't create one mega-link, though - it can behave funny cross-browser, and it'll create odd-looking anchor text. If it's a choice of that or leaving things alone, I'd leave things alone.
-
@Expand Online: You are absolutely right when you say more links don't pass the double amount of link juice, but I hear stories that a second link does pass a bit of link juice and takes away some of the advantage. Just wondering if it helps to make sure you just have one link for each product without thing away the usability for the visitor.
@João Vargas: It's not about cheating a search engine, it's just trying to make sure we are not wasting any unnecessary search engine resources. I'm not to sure what you mean with the second paragraph in your message though.
-
This probably would not work well. We should avoid as much trying to cheat search engines.
I do not know if I understand perfectly, but have you thought about remove the links in the categories and let them only when it enters the product. As I understand it, there are many links in the following categories on products area, is it?
-
Since creating more than one link to some URL from one page does not increase the linkjuice that is passed to that URL, I recon that Crawlers understand that these are identical links. This isn't easy to verify though...
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
-
Linking to a Resource from a multi-language Page
I have a multi-language page where the content is available in several versions (translated). I want to link to a resource that is only available in one English. Is it a good idea to link to this resource from all language versions or should I better include the link only in the English version of my page? In the first scenario for example a Spanisch and a German language version would link to a page in English. Is this ok or could it be considered spam?
Technical SEO | | ConverterApp0 -
50,000 pages or a page with parameters
I have a site with about 12k pages on a topic... each of these pages could use another several pages to go into deeper detail about the topic. So, I am wondering, for SEO purposes would it be better to have something like 50,000 new pages for each sub topic or have one page that I would pass parameters to and the page would be built on the fly in code behind. The drawback to the one page with parameters is that the URL would be static but the effort to implement would be minimal. I am also not sure how google would index a single page with parameters. The drawback to the 50k pages model is the dev effort and possibly committed some faux pas by unleashing so many links to my internal pages. I might also have to mix aspx with html because my project can't be that large. Anyone here ever have this sort of choice to make? Is there a third way I am not considering?
Technical SEO | | Banknotes0 -
Footer Links with same anchor text on all pages
We have different websites targeted at the different services our company provides. (e.g. For our document storage services, we have www.ukdocumentstorage.com. For document management, we have www.document-management-solutions.co.uk). If we take the storage site for example, every single page has a link in the footer to our document management site, with the anchor text 'Cleardata Document Management' SEOMoz is telling me that these are seen as external links (as they are on a different URL's), and I'm just clarifying that would this be a major possible factor in the website not ranking highly? How should I rectify this issue?
Technical SEO | | janc0 -
Is it better to have URLs of internal pages that are geo-targeted or point geo-targeted links to the homepage?
For example... Having links that are geo-targeted and pointing to this URL www.test.com/state-service/ or Not having any geo-targeted internal pages and just having links that are geo-targeted and pointing to this URL www.test.com Eventually the site will be a national campaign, so I am concerned about having so many geo-targeted internal pages. Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | Cyclone0 -
Noindex,follow - linked pages not showing
We have a blog on our site where the homepage and category pages have "noindex,follow" but the articles have "index,follow". Recently we have noticed that the article pages are no longer showing in the Google SERPs (but they are in Bing!) - this was done by using the "site:" search operator. Have double-checked our robots.txt file too just in case something silly had slipped in, but that's as it should be... Has anyone else noticed similar behaviour or could suggest things I could check? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Nobody15569050351140 -
How do I know which page a link is from
I've got an interesting situation. I hope you can help. I have a list of links but I'm not sure which pages of my site they are from. How do I know which page a specific link is from? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | VinceWicks0 -
If you add a no follow to a time sensitive link, will it get picked up as broken link 404 in WMT report?
We have a client who publishes deals that are time sensitive. Links to the deals expire and so Google's crawlers are picking them up and finding a 404 If I no follow them, will the 404's still get picked up and reported in WMT? The same question applies to SEOMoz Pro.
Technical SEO | | Red_Mud_Rookie0 -
Good links pratice for listing pages?
Hello, I'm wondering which is the best way to handle this kindle of page... You can have a look at my screen capture, or see directly my page here. I've in my case, for the same "ski resort", 3 differents anchor link type (title, image and more info…), all of them are going on the same page. I know it's not that good, my idea, it to keep only the more info like, but with a better anchor link, something like : more information about this ski resort... Thanks in advance 🙂 Best regards links.jpg
Technical SEO | | Alexandre_0