Empty href damages SEO? (href="#")
-
Hello,
I'm analyzing a website with thousands of pages.
I realized that on many of them they have empty links such href="#".I wonder if that will cause any SEO damage, or if Google will just ignore it as there isn't any link?
I was reading about it and people seems to not be sure, although they recommend on forums to user the CSS pointer clickable instead of empty link.
Let me know your opinion on this please!
Thank you in advance!
-
Thank you for the insight. I agree with your insight. You are correct in saying that it will affect signals because there is no link. And also not an SEO issue.
-
The only reason to use a fragment (the hashtag part of a URL is called a fragment) as your anchor, is that you're adding that link solely for the purpose of tying it to a DOM event (like an onclick event). There's better ways to do this in modern web programming, but it's still possible to see some old school sites doing
By definition, fragments exist solely for the client. Your web server will not log them. Google Analytics does not natively track them. So clicking on an empty fragment like that will just take you back to the top of your page (provided the JS doesn't stop the event). There's nothing to track. But there's something interesting to note here
Google can actually do some basic JS and it will recognize this bad attempt at link obfuscation as an actual link. So if you have links similar to this (which is not recommended) then those links will be counted as links. Be aware of this if you're worried about backlinks.
-
I think you need to take a look at the page and how these have been used because it sounds like you haven't understood what the actual problem is fully.
With regards to relevance, it will probably give search engines signals that this page is no longer relevant and therefore affecting the frequency of the crawl for that domain/subdomain/page
It won't do that because they aren't complete links.
This is basically a means to an end. It serves a purpose and while there are better options to achieve what they want, this is certainly not an SEO issue.
-Andy
-
In my opinion, pertaining to your case of "empty links", does it affect SEO? The answer probably lies in the amount of it. Maybe there is no direct impact if there is maybe 1 or 2 or even 10 links. In summary, yes it does affect SEO in the sense of it is not able to pass the juice. Think about a nice or highly searched keyword in an article - [Some nice keywords] and this anchor text does not go anywhere. The link equity probably gets passed no where and probably limited to that page only. With regards to relevance, it will probably give search engines signals that this page is no longer relevant and therefore affecting the frequency of the crawl for that domain/subdomain/page. Indirectly and overtime, this will affect SERP for that domain.
As far as how many empty href wills start affecting SEO? It will be interesting to see this experiment. Any takers? I'll leave this to the SEO heavy weights or SEO nerds.
Correction: I agree to Andy's comment below.
-
Something i'd never thought about: http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/anchor-links.html
So looks to not have an impact according to that article.
-
It looks like it's been done to activate certain functions, but it might have been a bit of a lazy way to do it.
However, because of the fact that they are a null link but they might show a description or more information, I can't see that this would ever cause issues to SEO.
Have you noticed that there has been any drop in positions that make you feel like they could be causing problems?
-Andy
-
Hey,
Well they are the maybe because some bug importing, and there are thousands of them like that.
We do not need that for any reason. Problem is that I will just request a change in case of being bad for SEO, otherwise it can be expensive to have someone spending days on that just because...https://www.prozis.com/pt/pt/xcore/xtreme-l-carnitine-3000mg-20-vials
If you go almost to the footer, you will see on bold this heading - under that you have some bulletins with the # link that I referred:
Principais Benefícios de Xtreme L-Carnitine 3000
-
Hi,
Is there a reason they are there? Do they serve any purpose at all?
I would be surprised if Google did anything with them and would probably just see it as a bit of spurious code. Are you able to share an example?
-Andy
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 profile links work related to offpage SEO?
Hi All, Does profile links work related to offpage SEO? My website was linked to many profiles on sites and wanted to know if i need to cleanup or leave it as they are so they benefit? Thanks
Link Building | | jomin740 -
Can i create more blogs/websites for SEO?
Hello, Can i create more blogs/websites 2.0 for SEO? It is safe to get backlinks from that pages (5-10 diffrent domains)? Blogs/websites like: wordpress.com, webs.com, soup.io... Content: Only unique content related to my websites, new content every week. My website realy need fresh backlinks so i think these method are alright?
Link Building | | cerar0 -
SEO advice for Link roundup
I publish a link roundup on my company blog on weekdays.
Link Building | | maribha
Example: http://www.shack.co.in/blog/argolinkroundups/daily-trail-game-jams-future-of-mapping-and-chomsky-on-education/ I do this using a Wordpress plugin created by Project Argo for NPR news websites. Right now, these link roundup pages have a very low authority score. Could you suggest a checklist of things to keep in mind while doing SEO for link roundups? Thanks, Abhiram0 -
The best way to spend 4 hours/day on offsite SEO?
I have an assistant who is able to do 4 hrs of SEO work for me every day. I don't have much onsite SEO work for him to do, and he's not skilled for social media management, so I'm thinking the best thing to have him do is manual link building. So far I've had him create a spreadsheet of more than 1,000 blogs and directories that relate to the subject matter of our websites, and had him include the domain authority of each and if they use the "nofollow" attribute on their links. Next I will have him start adding comments/submissions that include links back to our sites, starting with the highest DA sties and ones without the "nofollow" attributes. Do you agree this is the best way to have him spend his time? Are there other tasks you would highly recommend? Ryan
Link Building | | GreenHatWeb0 -
Wired image releases via Creative Commons for SEO
Wired Magazine has started to publish images under CC licence as reported here: http://www.niemanlab.org/2011/11/wired-releases-images-via-creative-commons-but-reopens-a-debate-on-what-noncommercial-means/ The images are found here http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2011/11/creative-commons/ They allow noncommercial use (though this is not clearly defined) and request to attribute to the original source and "ask for a link back to the original story where the photo first appeared". The latter does not seem to be compulsory, but of course is a great SEO tactic to generate deep links. What's your take on this? Does anyone have experience with providing image material with the request to attribute you as the original source?
Link Building | | zeepartner0 -
What are the benefits of SEO?
If a client asks "why should I spend time and money on SEO?", how would you answer? Is "to be found in search engines" the answer? If so, wouldn't it be more cost effective to use PPC instead of SEO? Is link building a waste of time and money? Is it better to just concentrate on quality content?
Link Building | | SharpKiwi0 -
Utilizing Print Media for SEO
Hey SEO MOZ, We have a client that holds the license to a famous Australian designer. The Designer and our client both get mentioned a lot in the print world. They get coverage in publications like the New York Times, Home and Garden Magazine and other top print media publications. Sometimes it's our clients business name mentioned and sometimes it's the designer's name who they hold the rights too. I'm wondering how we can utilize this exposure for their SEO? It already drives traffic to their website but it also be great to harness this exposure to increase their rankings. I know one way is to see if the article is also printed online and see if you can get a link on their. But I'm wondering if there are other ways to use this? Also do you have experience contacting major publications to see if they can put a link in an online published article and if they ever respond to these requests? Really appreciate this!
Link Building | | TWSOM0 -
Can too many high PR links can hurt SEO
I recently accuired about 10 PR 4- 5 for my website after getting mostly PR 1-2 for the past 6 months. After a couple of day my rankings not only didn't go up, but actually went down really drasticly for many keyphrases that i used to rank at the top 3. Should i keep building those high PR links in the same fast pace, should i slow down? Or maybe i should even those out with some low PR link?
Link Building | | atohad0