What is the optimum number of links on a page?
-
I have a local content based website which gives information of services under different categories and subcategories in a segment across multiple localities. Our menu is found across all pages and the menu has about 150 different links to sub-categories and categories. On any listings page that comes up, when you choose a particular category or sub-category, we have another 100 links relating to the individual listings in addition to the menu which is consistent across all pages. Is this a problem?
-
Prashant,
You could be told many different things depending on who you ask, but I'd say from my experience working at a company that makes websites, the answer is that there is no definitive answer.
That being said, there ARE helpful tips I can give you:
- "How many links?" is a less important question than "What kind of links?" Consider the position of each page in regard to where it is in your sales funnel (if at all). The closer to the bottom of the funnel (bottom = conversion), the more straightforward your navigation and direction should be. For instance, you wouldn't put a link to your "About Us" page on a landing page or contact form, because it directs traffic away from conversion and the flow of your site.
- The modern design tends toward simplicity - which means that while it's not necessarily a problem to have so many links, it will be confusing to your customers and lead people away from the content they were initially searching for. People are inattentive and fickle, so you want to guide them.
- Links need to fit logically with the content. If a page is about a service X, don't link to service Y unless it relates to service X, and you write your content in a way that makes sense.
I hope that's helpful for you!
-
As long as you have sitemaps listing where all these pages are, you should be fine.
What I would look at more closely, and perhaps more importantly, is when a user or search engine finally gets to the end page, meaning the end of the menu links, what content are they seeing?
Google used to have something in place where they didn't want to see more than 100 links per page, but I believe that has been removed now.
EDIT* confirmed:
http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-we-dropped-the-100-links-per-page-guideline-but-we-may-take-action-if-it-is-too-spammy-178197Pay special attention to how your internal linking is currently set up, and if it makes sense to your user. If your menu system is too complex, people wont use it, and Google will have issues indexing it. Take a look at site with large menu systems, and try and emulate their success and structure.
-
Hi
Check out this http://moz.com/learn/seo/internal-link
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
-
Local Landing Page Optimization and Multiple GMB Listings
Hello, We’re building out a site for our business that has close to 100 office locations in different cities. Many of these are ‘partner brands’ that we have acquired under our brand. Similar to a franchise model. We want to be able to help users find offices near their location. Each office will have it’s own landing page with a physical address and contact information. We know we’ll have to build out unique copy and markup customized to the office/location. We’ve already read through https://moz.com/blog/overcoming-your-fear-of-local-landing-pages as well. We’re also considering ‘silos’ to build out pages for each location. To preserve authority and avoid cannibalization; our thought was having each location as sub-folders off of our domain (i.e. domain.com/locations/Partner#1/). The other option would be using a sub-domain (i.e. Partner.Domain.com/) which we noticed competitors doing and treating each sub-domain as their own independent site. Is all of the above the correct strategy? Any further suggestions? Should we fill out a separate GMB for each office and should they all use the same brand name? (in other words “BrandA” vs. “BrandA” - Brooklyn Office). In addition to GMB; would each location need local listings created (also all under the same name)? Any help or insight would be very much appreciated. Looking forward to hearing from all of you! Thank you in advance. Best,
Local Listings | | Ben-R0 -
Google is indexing pages but they do not list on a brand search
One of my websites does not display sitelinks when using a branded search on mobile. Desktop , it is fine. Moz tells me I have no crawl issues. What could be reason for sitelinks not showing on mobile? Any thoughts?
Local Listings | | Web_Prosper_SEO0 -
How to get 1st page rankings in the local cleaning niche.
Hi guys, I'm trying to learn how to market my carpet cleaning website in Google but without much success. I'm reading marketing forums for over 6 months still can't achieve 1st page rankings. What I'm missing? Can you please check the site and tell me what to improve to get good rankings in Google UK? There are some competitors which are doing very well, for example competitor1, competitor2 but I can't figure out what they have which I don't? I'm not very experienced in marketing but hope someone here will guide me how rank my cleaning website on 1st page.
Local Listings | | badit340 -
How will changing the phone number on my website affect SEO?
We are considering changing the phone number to our website to one of those 1-800-eat-cows. How will changing a phone number we've had 10 years affect our SEO. Do we need to change all citations, Google maps, etc etc? What if we don't? Thanks!
Local Listings | | RoxBrock0 -
Do you need contact details (NAP) on every page of your website for local search ranking ?
We’ve got a clients site which doesn't have the contact details on every page, all the contact details are on the /contact page which is using the schema.org local business markup Some sites that our outranking us locally have their contact details on all pages, where as others only have it on the contact page also. Is having your contact details on every page a ranking factor for local search ?
Local Listings | | mike8780 -
Google Plus Pages are No Longer Available From SERPs?
We have noticed that the links to our google plus pages have become inaccessible to all of our client google plus location profiles from search result pages. I am getting lots of questions about this from our clients and am just not sure what to say. Does anyone have any idea what is happening here? I do notice that some large brands have "profiles" links below their information on the right side of SERPs that includes google plus links: https://www.google.com/search?q=american+airlines and some do not: https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#safe=off&q=nike I can't imagine we are abandoning our business.google.com location profiles but what do we know if anything regarding the plan here is? Whatsthehaps?
Local Listings | | Sans_Terra0 -
SEO best practices for store locator and local pages - 301 or not?
I have been struggling to answer this on my own and now throwing up for the Moz community for a life line. Our company has several location across 6 states. We have local pages that we are working to improve with better content. We also have a store locator that will list the stores but the pages are not the same. See below example. I can't help but feel like I am splitting juice and traffic that should be combined to one page for each location. Any ideas or advice on how we can best combine/funnel the traffic to one optimized page? Here is an example: State local page - http://www.jakesfireworks.com/michigan/ Locator page for state - http://www.jakesfireworks.com/locator/?state=MI City local page - http://www.jakesfireworks.com/michigan/grand_rapids City Locator page - http://www.jakesfireworks.com/locator/?id=183&state=MI
Local Listings | | devonkrusich0 -
Missing Links
I've recently been researching local memberships and associations to submit my business information to as a way to get involved in the community and gain backlinks simultaneously. A specific listing I was looking into, Think Local First (http://thinklocalfirst.net/Members) has a DA of 37 with the listing page at a 26 PA ( and homepage at 42 PA). After checking out a few of Think Local Firsts's currently listed websites on OSE, I've noticed that not one of them is showing an inbound link from this organization. I would like to represent my business on this page, but would prefer to gain a link from doing so. Can anyone give me any insight as to why this isn't reflected in the business's backlinks? I did check a couple sites with majestic and Ahrefs with the same results. Thanks in advance!
Local Listings | | LMcLaughlin0