Best On-Site Internal Linking Practices?
-
Hi everyone,
Our company works extensively with ecommerce website, and we're beginning to wonder with all of the impending Google updates what our best bets for internal linking practices will be, in particular when it comes to menu options. We typically set up our navigation with top-level categories in the main menu, then drop downs to the sub-category level pages. Our question is, should the links in the drop-down menus be followed, and if so, should they be followed links across all pages of the website, or just on the homepage menu list, or not at all?
We're trying to figure out what will pass the most internal linking power without being too much and overly "spammy," I guess.
Thanks for your input!
-
Thanks so much for the input, everyone. Really appreciate all of your opinions. We'll do some experimenting with the navigation layout as per your recommendations and see how we can make it work for us!
Thanks again, guys!
-
Takeshi is right, James- you gain nothing by adding nofollow to internal links. In addition, if you attract attention with a lot of it, you could even incur a penalty. Matt Cutts has stated more than once that nofollowing internal links isn't advisable, except perhaps in limited special circumstances, such as to a contact form or privacy policy. If you get carried away with internal nofollow, it could look like you're trying to sculpt pagerank, and that could cause you problems you don't want to have.
-
Again, you don't want to nofollow your internal links. Nofollowing your links has no positive impact, and just prevents any link value from flowing to your internal pages.
If you have a particularly large category structure, one thing you may want to try is limiting the links in your drop-downs to the top subcategories. Even if you have 10 different menus with 20 different subcategories each, chances are 80% of your users are only selecting 20% of the links (or less). Install a site tracker such as CrazyEgg or Clciktale to figure out which links your users actually use, and eliminate the ones that don't get many clicks.
So your navigation would look something like this:
Automobiles
Tires
Oil
Batteries
Accessories
More Auto Products -
Have you tried turning the drop down off and running a test to see how your goals compare? Or even if just the pages / visit etc.. drop.
-
We do have that implemented on some sites...but for others, we prefer the drop-down feature for easier navigation on the user end. So when a user hovers over the top-level category, the sub-category options appear below it, so less clicking through to a number of different pages - users can go straight to the sub-category they're looking for straight from the homepage. I guess these are really the links we're curious about - the sub-category links in the drop-down menus...to follow or not to follow?
Thanks for all of your input so far - much appreciated!!
-
Having just the top level categories in the main menu like you said is a good option. No need to overload the users with too many choices. Then once the user is in a specific category, the sidebar nav can show navigation links for subcategories.
-
The only issue I think we would run into with this is that some of our catalogs get rather large, and we don't want to have too MANY on-page links. We know that having no-follow links won't cause more link power to flow to other links, but we're wondering what would be the best, most efficient, most powerful way to handle a large catalog without overloading the links on each page...
-
Ooops, I'd done this on my own site.
We had a menu linking to all pages on every page. I tried limiting this but the design of the site put some limitations on me, so I implemented rel=nofollow on some internal pages....
I think now I'll go remove them.....
-
Nofollowing a link does not cause more link power to flow to your other links, it just causes that link juice that would have gone to that page to "evaporate", resulting in a loss of link equity. In general, you NEVER want to nofollow your own pages.
As far as internal linking for ecommerce sites goes, I generally look to amazon.com & overstock.com for good site architecture and good ecommerce SEO in general.
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
-
Should I focus on building links to my homepage, or internal pages?
I'm hiring several PA's to contact site's linking to my competition. Should we try to get links to content pages (blog post, article, etc) or build links directly to my homepage? More info: My site is a web application, so most links will naturally fall on the homepage. If links to content are more important we'll need to change our strategy. We are pitching the free version of the application to universities and schools as a resource for their students.
Link Building | | Dunjenman0 -
Internal Linking Anchor text
Hallo everybody, I am trying to improve internal linking but I am little bit confused about internal linking title. Should I use Kenya all-inclusive accommodation, Kenya full board accommodation etc or I should be using the title without the destination name, all-inclusive accommodation, full board accommodation? My worry is if it will not be too much of Kenya in each title. Any advice what is the best practice? Thank you very much
Link Building | | Rebeca10 -
Too many links from one site?
In webmaster tools in 'links to your site' I have a totla of 819 links but 580 have appeared from one site. Is this bad for SEO?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
Internal Links and Page Authority - Best Practices
Hello, Is it bad (in terms of ranking in the SERPS) if i have a link from a page with PA of 18 going to a page with PA of 21? In other words, does it matter if the page containing the link has a lower page authority than the page receiving the link? Page A links to Page B Page A page authority is 18 Page B page authority 21 could this negatively affect my rankings? Thanks
Link Building | | Prime850 -
My site has more than 1,341,796 total links but only 500 external links after months of SEO. Please help me ,not sure what went wrong.
My site has more than 1,341,796 total links but only 500 external links after months of SEO. Please help me ,not sure what went wrong.
Link Building | | rsethia1230 -
Is a no-follow link/sponsored link a good editorial link?
Ok maybe this is a dumb question. I really need some better, more quality backlinks pointing to my site. There is a site that has domain authority of 72, page rank 5 that is offering me a sponsored blog post. Do sponsored posts count as a good editorial link? Also what if they are no-follow (and how would I find out ahead of time), does that still give me link juice?
Link Building | | tutugirl0 -
How do sites have so many 'total links'?
I've been analyzing some of our competitors: essayedge.com and papercheck.com Both sites have a large number of 'total links'... about 93,000 each. The former has about 1,200 linking root domains while the latter only has 195. Even for 1,200 linking root domains, 93k total links seems like a ton to me. Our site has 101 linking root domains and only 299 'total links'. I'm quite new to this whole SEO game and admittedly still learning a TON. Am I missing something here? How do sites generate so many links? This seems nuts to me. Thanks for any help!
Link Building | | TBiz0 -
What are the best tactics for SEO on a brand new site?
What is on everyones to do list when starting SEO work on a brand new site that has had no SEO work done in the past?
Link Building | | MediaBazooka0