Too Many On Page Links, rel="nofollow" and rel="external"
-
Hi,
Though similar to other questions on here I haven't found any other examples of sites in the same position as mine.
It's an e-commerce site for mobile phones that has product pages for each phone we sell. Each tariff that is available on each phone links through to the checkout/transfer page on the respective mobile phone network. Therefore when the networks offer 62 different tariffs that are available on a single phone that means we automatically start with 62 on page links that helps to quickly tip us over the 100 link threshold.
Currently, we mark these up as rel="external" but I'm wondering if there isn't a better way to help the situation and prevent us being penalised for having too many links on page so:
- Can/should we mark these up as rel="nofollow" instead of, or as well as, rel="external"?
- Is it inherently a problem from a technical SEO point of view?
- Does anyone have any similar experiences or examples that might help myself or others?
As always, any help or advice would be much appreciated
-
How is your transfer page working, technically - it seems to be resolving as a straight 200 for me. Those transfer pages are usually where affiliates start to get creative (they might 302, for example).
-
Thanks Tela.
I think you might be on to something here. You're right that the worry is looking needlessly spammy by having too many affiliate links on page and also about conserving link juice.
It's something I'll have to speak to our development team about because generating the tariff code dynamically might take a fair bit of work. It's definitely an idea I think we should investigate.
Regarding the interstitial URL/step after the user select the phone they want - there is already a 'transfer page' that holds them for a few seconds before taking them to the network's basket/checkout. I fear that adding yet another step before that would have a negative impact on the customer journey as we already see people dropping out in the post-transfer stage before completing the sale.
Cheers for the help.
-
Thanks Dr Pete.
The target page takes the customer to a dynamic 'transfer' page with affiliate tracking information that ensures the sale gets attributed to us. We have to do this because we don't have our own cart/checkout system. It's not an affiliate link swapping program or anything dubious - we don't actually get linked back to by the networks. I'd have thought Google was used to handling official affiliate programs.
I can totally see why it would look bad to Google by having this many external affiliate links on page but there is little we can do about the number of deals that the network offers. Our system of showing a restricted number of deals upon landing with the option to see 10 more at a time helps deal with UX issues.
It's reassuring to note that it is less of an issue because it is a deeper page than the home page.
Seeing as we are official affiliates to the major networks can you recommend any practices or techniques to mitigate the impact of large numbers of affiliate links to their sites?
-
I agree with Dr. Pete that this seems like the same sort of challenge that affiliate links have, even if this isn't a standard affiliate program link. It sounds to me like there might be a UI/UX solution that could address this issue.
Could you add an intersticial URL / step after the user selects the phone they want that contains the tariff codes? Could you use a selector on the page to let the user select and generate the link with the tariff code dynamically, thus having one on-page URL conserving link juice? Just a couple of ideas, but it seems like the real issue is conserving link juice, and it's not necessary to keep the on-page links under the 100 link limit.
-
Since these are really external links, it's a bit different calculus, especially since they're deeper on the site. "Nofollow" won't really help from a link juice perspective (it still gets burnt), although it would disavow those links, in a sense.
How is the target page redirecting to the outside site? I'm having a hard time telling with header checkers. That could impact the SEO implications quite a bit. This almost seems like an affiliate link sort of scenario, so it's more a matter of how Google sees the hundreds of links between these two sites.
They're definitely burning up some internal link equity, but at this level of the site (search results to product pages), that's not as big of an issue as if this were the home-page or a major category page, etc.
-
I get what you're saying. That's the general SEO best practice that I'm aware of. I was just looking for something a bit deeper than general kind of guidance.
Our user navigation isn't ideal (sadly there's not much as SEO I can do about it) but with the right filters and options it works ok. We can't really remove the links because they are the tariff options as they come through from the networks themselves. We do however show a tailored few when people land on the page with the option to see all deals.
With that in mind I'm essentially asking is there a better way to markup these links than with rel="external"? They are external links after all but we don't want to risk having this many links on the page cause negative side effects.
The user experience is generally fine and the number of links is fixed. I wonder if we can't do better with what we currently have by improving our PR distribution somehow.
Here is an example of a product page:
-
you can have over 100 links on a page now. that was an old rule when Google had limited bandwidth and the crawler would abandon a page acter following a certain number of links. now google sucks up whatever there is on a page.
do what makes most sense for user navigation. too many links can be overkill or might fit perfectly into your model.
Keep in mind you are really splitting up your PR by having so many links and pushing pr to all pages instead of the main ones.
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
-
Does adding new pages, new slugs, new URLS in a site affects rankings and visibility?
hi reader, i have decided to add new pages to my site. if i add new urls, i feel like i have to submit the sitemap again. my question is, does submitting sitemap again with new slugs or urls affects visibility is serps, if yes, how do i minimize the impact?
Web Design | | SIMON-CULL0 -
JS and HTML links: Any risk involved being employing two similar links on every page?
Hi all, We used a have a banner with link from all pages our subdomain. The link is JS link and it's linking to our website homepage from our sub domain. Recently we have added similar HTML link from all pages of sub domain presuming that Google might not be considering JS links. So, now we have 2 links (JS and HTML) from every page of sub domain pointing to the website. If Google considers 2 links, will there be any risk for employing same link twice from every page? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
With Google's new Speed Update, what does that mean for AMP pages?
Hey everyone! I wanted to get the other Mozzers opinions on this. With Google announcing a new Speed Update that will affect mobile rankings, I wanted to ask: How will AMP pages play into this? Let me know what you think!Â
Web Design | | TaylorRHawkins
Thanks!2 -
Fixing my sites problem with duplicate page content
My site has a problem with duplicate page content. SEO MOZ is telling me 725 pages worth. I have looked a lot into the 301 Re direct and the Rel=canonical Tag and I have a few questions: First of all, I'm not sure which on I should use in this case. I have read that the 301 Redirect is the most popular path to take. If I take this path do I need to go in and change the URL of each of these pages or does it automatically change with in the redirect when I plug in the old URL and the new one? Also, do I need to just go to each page that SEO MOZ is telling me is a duplicate and make a redirect of that page? One thing that I am very confused about is the fact that some of these duplicates listed out are actually different pages on my site. So does this just mean the URL's are too similar to each other, and there fore need the redirect to fix them? Then on the other hand I have a log in page that says it has 50 duplicates. Would this be a case in which I would use the Canonical Tag and would put it into each duplicate so that the SE knew to go to the original file? Sorry for all of the questions in this. Thank you for any responses.
Web Design | | JoshMaxAmps0 -
How to optimize SEO value of links in a calendar
Hi All- I am building a website about outdoor activities (cycling, kayaking, hiking, etc.). The site will most likely be built with either Joomla or Wordpress. A key piece of the site will be a calendar of upcoming events. The calendar will list the basic attributes of each event like date, time and location. However if an event has a webpage of it's own I will also include a link to that page in the details of the event. My question is: How can I create a calendar that will capitalize on the SEO value of the links included in the event descriptions? I've noticed many similar sites put events into a Google calendar and then embed the Google calendar into their webpage. In that situation would Google even see any external links included in the descriptions of the events? Thanks in advance for any input. -Chris
Web Design | | 1968Rouleur0 -
Duplicate Page Content mysite.com and mysite.com/index.html MOZ Dashboard
According to MOZ Dashboard my site shows Duplicate Page Content mysite.com and mysite.com/index.html .What i can do for that .redirect mysite.com/index.html to mysite.com .then how can i do that using .htaccess file .
Web Design | | innofidelity0 -
Page Redirection solution
Page Redirection solution needs, there are 2 sites in the same folder and one page of old site is bxxxxxseo.com/products.php new site bxxxxxseo.com/product_list.php .there are many old page indexed i wanna redirect all old pages to relevant pages of new site using SEO friendly way .Any help really appropriate. Thank you
Web Design | | innofidelity0 -
Are slimmed down mobile versions of a canonical page considered cloaking?
We are developing our mobile site right now and we are using a user agent sniffer to figure out what kind of device the visitor is using. Once the server knows whether it is a desktop or mobile browser it will deliver the appropriate template. We decided to use the same URL for both versions of the page rather than using m.websiteurl.com or www.websiteurl.mobi so that traffic to either version of these pages would register as a visit to the page. Will search engines consider this cloaking or is mobile "versioning" an acceptable practice? The pages in essence are the same, the mobile version will just leave out extraneous scripts and unnecessary resources to better display on a mobile device.
Web Design | | TahoeMountain400