Empty <a>tag (no href or name attribute specificed) potential effect on link juice</a>
-
I have a client that insists on using the ProPhoto WordPress theme. This theme has an interesting habit of putting empty anchor tags in the site nav in order to nest css dropdowns. By empty I mean totally empty. For example:
<a>Navigation Link</a>
Since the anchor does not specify a destiation, do you think it would have any effect on link juice one way or the other? This wouldn't count as an additional link on the page would it?
My inclination and personal practice is not to risk quirky things like this, but I'd like a second opinion before I suggest changes to the client's site.
Thanks!
-
I've been thinking about this one too. And my inital reaction is that it doesn't count. Another thread at Google backs me up, http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=7778313784ba6db5&hl=en
I'd go with that it doesn't, not unless the href is present.
-
I know! I searched far and wide and found no discussion on this at all which was both surprising and frustrating. The lack of information is what led me to post the question because surely someone has encountered this at somepoint, right!?
-
Thanks for the feedback Barry. it is much appreciated. I tend to agree that the href would be a far more probable trigger for determining what is actually a link than the <a>itself.</a>
<a>I just want to make sure I give the best possible advice to my client, but I am starting to lean toward this being something of a non-issue the more I think about it.</a>
<a>To answer your question regarding how the nav works: In this case the :hover css pseudo-class on the empty</a> <a>tag causes the nested sub-menu with actual links to become visible. The empty</a> <a>is nothing but a trigger for the sub-menu.</a>
<a>Cheers!
Dameian</a>
-
I've been having a think about this one and while I'm not sure, I'm going to say I don't think it wouldn't have an effect on link juice passing. As in if there were 4 links and an empty anchor the juice would be divided by 4 and not 5.
Current W3 anchor use - http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html#h-12.1.3 - allows for various parameters in the <a>tag, however I'm willing to bet (not a huge sum of money though) that the href itself triggers the link part of a link (and am I right saying even js links need href="#" or similar to trigger?).</a>
<a>Plus I think older versions of HTML allowed things other than links within anchors (though I may be making that up) so if the engines have grown around those older versions it makes sense they look for something other than the 'a' in the tag to work.
I can't think of a good way to test though, maybe somebody can clarify my thinking or tell me if I'm wrong.
I agree with you though that it's not wise to put quirky elements like this on a page, especially if there's a lot of dropdowns. How do the navigation links work if there's no href?</a>
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
-
We have 302 redirect links on our forum that point to individual posts. Should we add a rel="nofollow" to these links?
Moz is showing us that we have a HUGE amount of 302 redirects. These are coming from our community forum. Forum URL: https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/ Example thread URL: https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/viewthread/322/ Example URL that points to a specific reply: https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/viewreply/1582/ The above link 302 redirects to this URL: https://www.foodbloggerpro.com/community/viewthread/322/#1582 My two questions would be: Do you think we should we add rel=nofollow to the specific reply URLs? If possible, should we make those redirects 301 vs. 302? Screencast attached. nofollow_302.mp4
Technical SEO | | Bjork1 -
Will a blog post about a collection of useful tools and web resources for a specific niche being seen as negative by google for too many links?
SEO newbie here, I'm thinking about creating a blog post about a collection of useful tools and web resources for my specific niche. It'd be 300 links or more, but with comments, and categorized nicely. It'd be a useful resource for my target audience to bookmark, and share. Will google see this as a negative? If so, what's the best way to do such a blog post? Thanks
Technical SEO | | ericzou0 -
Internal link structure, find out if there are any internal links to this page
When i use this url in open site explorer it says that there are no internal links:
Technical SEO | | wilcoXXL
http://goo.gl/d2s6tJ
Page Authority is also 1, it should be higher of there are any internal links to it right? But i am very sure there are links to this url on my website. For example on this URL:
http://goo.gl/ucixRH How certain can i be of this? Because if i can be very certain, than we have a internal linkstructure problem on our entire site i believe.0 -
Meta tags
Hello, Does anyone know how long it takes for the meta descriptions to show up in Google? This because I just updated my meta descriptions for the whole website, but while moz toolbar is showing it correctly, google is still showing the old ones, even if i used the see as googlebot tool from webmaster tools. Thanks for a reply
Technical SEO | | socialengaged
Eugenio | Social Engagement0 -
Google Shows 24K Links b/w 2 sites that are not linked
Good Morning, Does anyone have any idea why Google WMT shows me that i have 24,101 backlinks from one of my sites ( http://goo.gl/Jb4ng ) pointing to my other site ( http://goo.gl/JgK1e ) ... These sites have zero links between them, as far as I can see/tell. Can someone please help me figure out why Google is showing 24k backlinks? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
Do I need to add canonical link tags to pages that I promote & track w/ UTM tags?
New to SEOmoz, loving it so far. I promote content on my site a lot and am diligent about using UTM tags to track conversions & attribute data properly. I was reading earlier about the use of link rel=canonical in the case of duplicate page content and can't find a conclusive answer whether or not I need to add the canonical tag to these pages. Do I need the canonical tag in this case? If so, can the canonical tag live in the HEAD section of the original / base page itself as well as any other URLs that call that content (that have UTM tags, etc)? Thank you.
Technical SEO | | askotzko1 -
Why would a link shown on OSE appear differently than the page containing the link?
I recently traded links with a site that I will call www.example.com When I used open site explorer to check the link it came back with a different page authority as www.example.com/index.htm yet the link does appear on the www.example.com page. Why would this be?
Technical SEO | | casper4340 -
Does anyone see benefit in .com/en vs .com/uk for a UK site?
The client is already on /en and in my opinion there is not much to be gained by switching to /uk
Technical SEO | | Red_Mud_Rookie0