Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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
-
Backlink Transparency with SEO Agency
Hello everyone. I recently started working with an SEO agency and today they gave me an updated keyword report which showed some increase in rankings. I was not aware that any backlinks had been created yet so I asked for a report of the links. Their response is below and I am just wondering if this is normal practice being I have not worked with any type of SEO agency yet. "
Link Building | Aug 28, 2018, 6:14 PM | wonderd24
Hey Daniel, We release a small report on them which the guest blog team will do soon. We don't reveal all backlink sources unfortunately because people have tried to bother the webmasters we have and basically steal our techniques. But rest assured you will be ranking at the top of the pack with our methods 😃
"1 -
Are "Redirect 303 & Iframe" types of backlinks?
Are "Redirect 303 & Iframe" types of backlinks? google count them?
Link Building | Feb 22, 2015, 1:26 PM | zant0 -
Creating A Scholarship For SEO
My client is a Law Firm just outside of Tampa, and I am trying to get her keyword phrase: "Tampa Car Accident Attorney" in the top 3. One of the strategies I want to use is to create a scholarship for "Tampa Area Students and how a car accident impacted their life" or "Tampa Area Students and how they think they can decrease car accidents." (that's still be worked on). Once the scholarship is created, I want to put it on our Tampa Car Accident Attorney page, and get other companies to link to that page. My question is what links should we go after? Because that will tailor it to who we give the scholarship to. We could give it to a University of South Florida student, and get one .edu link. We could do the same thing for the University of Tampa, or Stetson Law School, but we'd only be getting one link from each of them. If we set it up for high schoolers, we can get more links from the community and schools, but I'm not sure high school .edu links matter all that much. Is 10 high school .edu links as important as 1 college .edu link? I don't know. If anyone has had an experience with this or any insights, I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks!
Link Building | Jul 25, 2014, 10:39 AM | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
Do incoming links from my feedburner account help my SEO?
Hi, I know this is kind of an amateur question. I just created my first feedburner account here http://feeds.feedburner.com/posicionamientowebenbuscadores/edxv and I noticed that all the links to my blog articles are do follow and from a PR7? Will this boost my PR or SEO? Thanks Carla
Link Building | Jan 16, 2020, 2:43 AM | Carla_Dawson0 -
Article submission web-sites and SEO
Does article submission web-sites have any impact to SEO in these days? There are a lot of good/not so good article submission databases, but does it really matter if you spend a time to write unique articles for them? I mean, is it a good way for link-building, or should I spend more time for other parts of SEO? There are also a special websites (for example SubmitYourArticle) which automate this process, does it make sense to use this services? Alternates? Lots of questions… Update Sorry, I found some good answers only after that I posted this question.
Link Building | May 13, 2013, 2:50 AM | ditoroin0 -
Mat Release SEO Impact
How do Mat Releases affect SEO? Does google recognize that your are syndicating duplicate content even if the content is being syndicated across top media outlets? Do these back links still carry any authority or can we even be penalized for the duplicate content? I came across mat releases here: http://matrelease.com/ An example of article syndication outlets: Guaranteed Placement on 800+ Media Sites. Generate guaranteed article placement on more than 800 respected online media outlets. Our digital distribution network includes: The LA Times; The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (JS Online); Las Vegas Review Journal; Hearst media sites for the San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle and Connecticut Post and others; local TV news affiliate sites from ABC, CBS, FOX and others; and hundreds more trusted sites.
Link Building | Apr 10, 2013, 6:58 PM | bloomnation0 -
Warrior Forum, Is it good for seo?
The Warrior Forum just changed there membership from free to paid. They have do follow attributes but I was wondering what peoples take is on joining them for both learning and seo purposes?
Link Building | Jul 2, 2012, 11:57 AM | bronxpad0 -
Need ideas to get do follow links from highly competative niche "wedding"
I need to get high quality do-follow links and my target market/keyword is ‘Maui wedding’ and a few others. Because it is such a competitive market I am having a hard time getting links from local companies providing Maui Weddings (I know why because they are my competitors) and national companies sites aren't much help because they are trying to provide leads to their advertisers. I would like do-follow links from non-paid sources any ideas or resources you could help with would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Link Building | Oct 19, 2011, 2:03 PM | photoseo10
