Too Many On-Page Links
-
Most of my pages have "Too Many On-Page Links".
If you view the website you will see this is mainly down to the top navigation drop down menu: http://www.cwesolutions.co.uk
So if I wanted to reduce the number of links I would have to have category links with landing pages.
How much does having "Too Many On-Page Links" effect my website ranking? Is it really important and would I notice a difference if I changed it?
-
In the sense that a report is alerting that there are too many links on a page though is going to be because it is warning of authority leakage more than anything else though.
Granted, the insertion of 'just' in my previous statement probably misleads...
I agree though that if you were to link every page to every page, it would just cause a royal headache to crawlers - why one would do that though is beyond me.
-
Sorry Pete, that was a typo where I meant to say 'internal linkage is classed differently as external linkage' (I've amended my reply).
-
To say "linking just dilutes the authority from the page" is not strictly true.
In this particular instance I do not believe that the menu is too OTT in terms of links but if you have every page linking to every page you just end up creating a mesh of links that search engines can waste crawl time trying to decipher.
Too many links with poor structure can mean that your crawl allocation is wasted which results in less of your pages being indexed properly.
-
Thanks Geoff, but want did you mean here...
Internal linkage is classed differently as internal linkage?
-
What makes you think you have too many on page links? Internal linkage is classed differently as external linkage, linking just dilutes the authority from the page (amongst other crawlability and usability factors), but if it's internal linkage, at least the authority is kept on your domain.
Simple, effective and easy to use navigation is critical to website usability and will have an affect on performance in search engines. In your example, I wouldn't expect any negative ranking affects to occur as a result of the style of navigation menu your website utilises. If that is deemed most useful for your customers, then that's the best approach.
-
Use a tool such as SEOmoz' Crawl Test or Xenu's Link Sleuth to determine any crawling issues. There are a number of free online tools for this too.
-
Thanks for your reply and explanation. One more question... How would I know if the bots are having a problem crawling my website?
-
Too many links on a page can make it difficult for bots to crawl your site. If you have over 100 links on page, make certain you have a sitemap that lays out a road map for the bots.
If your site is being effectively crawled, don't worry about it. I would worry if the linking structure is impacting the user experience or if deeper pages weren't getting crawled.
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
-
Is it important to keep your website home index page simple to rank better?
My website http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/ markets holiday cottages and it's grown from my own singular cottage into a small letting agency and I used to rank at best number 3 for the short tailed keywords like Whitby holiday cottages with its drop-down to position 10 on Google.co.uk. So this week I was looking for a UK business to help me improve my rankings and the first thing they said was my home page is detrimental with the listing too many conflicting info with it advertising all 12 properties on it. They suggested a door entry page into the site keeping it simple but when I run it through the analysing tool here on Moz for "Whitby holiday cottages" as an example it came out looking okay. I do the usual things of title tags and meta descriptions for my keywords etc any suggestions or advice would be very welcome thank you Alan
Web Design | | WhitbyHolidayCottages0 -
Post vs Pages
Does Google make any distinction between a web page and a blog post? Assuming all else is equal...any reason why a page would rank higher than a post? And that includes a page in WordPress vs a WordPress blog post.
Web Design | | Pinlaser1 -
How to do a non-spammy "doorway page"?
Hi there, ISSUE: I have a client who wishes to use a "doorway" page, but not in a spammy way. He would like to have a nice crisp URL for use in ads/brochures. The page is strictly a landing page (just with a separate URL). DOORWAY/LANDING PAGE WILL BE: Non-spammy -- There will be no attempt to optimize the landing page/no attempt to get the page to rank. Strictly a vanity URL -- he likes the way a separate website looks in ads as opposed to a landing page on the existing website (i.e., www.websitename.com/landing page) WHAT I'M TRYING TO DO: I'm basically trying to figure out what the best things to do to protect his other sites (which are very high quality valuable sites which rank well) from getting punished. STEPS I'M CONSIDERING: Robots no follow Separate hosting server Different person's name on a private domain registration Adding additional pages, so it's not a 1-page "doorway" Many thanks in advance to anyone who would share their experience and help me protect my client in the best way possible. I've told him there are risks, but he still wants to go ahead. MC
Web Design | | marketingcupcake1 -
Wordpress Pages not indexing in Google
Hi, I've created a Wordpress site for my client. I've produced 4 content pages and 1 home page but in my sitemap it only says I have 1 page indexed. Also SEOmoz only finds 1 page. I'm lost on what the problem could be. The domain name is www.dobermandeen.co.uk Many thanks for any help. Alex
Web Design | | SeoSheikh0 -
Does page speed worth for SEO?
I always broken my head to try to follow all pagespeed guidelines. I increase my pagespeed significantly, but i didnt saw any effect in my SEO performance. In my keywords, my concorrents are crap on it (I have score of 90 and they are at 60-70).Does google gives importance to it?
Web Design | | Naghirniac0 -
Why is Google sending traffic to our homepage, not our optimized pages?
Hello Forum, My team and I just completely redid a yoga eCommerce site, including its SEO. The old version of the site didn't feature page-specific optimization and, as a result, Google's search results for our keywords almost always directed visitors to the homepage. For example, a Google search for the term "yoga bolster" sent users to the homepage, not the product category page for yoga bolsters. After redoing the site and optimizing specific pages (i.e. the yoga bolster page is now optimized for the keyword "yoga bolster"), the Google search results are still taking users to the homepage, not the optimized page. (i.e. if you search for yoga bolster, find our search result, and click the search result link, you're taken to the homepage, not the bolster page) It's only been about 36 hours since we've launched the new website and submitted it to Google's webmaster tools. Does anyone know why Google is still sending people to our homepage and not the keyword-optimized pages we created? Is this a timing issue?
Web Design | | pano0 -
Is it necessary to redirect every Error page (404 or 500) found?
If I have Hundreds of pages with 404 and 500 erros should set up 301 redirects for all of them? Some of the pages have external links, some don't.
Web Design | | jmansd0 -
Products page design | e-commerce
Hi All, We are redesiging our ecommerce site and product page is bothering us. We want to tidy up. We want to hide some of the description with jquery script. Visitor will be able to view first 30 words and there will be a "read more" text link just after that content. If they want to read more (which we think most will do) they will have to click the text link and rest of the content will slide open in the same page. The whole content is visible from source code. Would this be ok as far as Google and SEO concerned? I hope I explained it well 🙂
Web Design | | Jvalops0