Max # of recommended links per page?
-
I've heard it said that Google may choose to stop following links after the first 100 on a page. The landing/category pages for my site's product catalog have earned quite a respectable PR and positioning in search results, and I'm currently paginating their product listings (about 200 products in a category) so that only a couple dozen products are shown on the first page, with links to "next page" and "previous page" being accomplished via query string (i.e. "?page=3").
An alternative option I have is to link to 100% of the contained products within the category's landing page (which would increase my on-page link count to ~300) and use CSS/Javascript to allow the user to simulate browsing between pages on the client side.
My goal is to see as many of my product pages indexed as possible. Is this done better using my current scheme (where Googlebot would have to navigate to, say, Landing Page -> Page 6 -> Deeply Buried Product Page) or in the alternative method above, where all the links are in a single page? Since my landing pages are currently treated pretty well by search engines, would that "trust" cause them to follow more links than might normally be done?
Thank you!
-
Jonathan,
The "rule" used to be 100 links to a page based on Google having included that in their guidelines. They've since removed that numeric value without replacing it with another number. What I find in my large client sites where there's hundreds or thousands of products in a category is the pagination method. The key is to ensure to append each page's Title, URL and h1 with "Page X".
This is best simply because it helps ensure Google discovers all the products and properly credits them to the core category. By trying to force all of the products onto a single page, and using any method that hides most initially for usability, you introduce the possibility that not all those products will be discovered, no matter how much Google does a "good" job at discovering links inside CSS or JavaScript. In reality, their system is far from perfect, and with all that added code, the possibility exists that you cause crawl problems due to imperfect code.
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
-
Homepage On-page Optimization
How do you all handle homepage optimization, if you (or a client) offers a variety of services? Our homepage has the strongest link profile of any of our pages, but it lists all the areas of law we cover. Therefore, it has too many keywords and none really rank well. Should we just pick our most profitable areas and optimize for that? www.kempruge.com in case anyone would benefit from looking at the actual page. Thanks, Ruben
On-Page Optimization | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Page 2 is ranking
Hey All, I'm working on a wordpress site project and in analytics the sites ranking url is page 2. is this a problem?
On-Page Optimization | | CobraJones950 -
Ranked page is not desired page
I have a question on a problem I am currently faced with. There is a certain keyword that my employer wants to rank for. The good news is that sometimes it does rank in the top 5 pages of Google. (It drops in and out) The bad news is that it is going to a page that we need to keep, but not the ideal place we want people who are looking for that keyword to go to. I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with this type of situation and what tactic they used to get people to the better page.
On-Page Optimization | | trumpfinc1 -
Recommended Length for a Companies "Services" Page Content
I am in the process of revamping my company's website. I do WordPress Development, Design, and SEO consulting, and i'm running into a sort of writer's block when wring my services pages. For example, my page on WordPress Security has 388 words of "body" content, and I feel from a content perspective, it serves it's purpose, but from an SEO perspective it is considered a little light. I really don't know what the SOP is here, because, I've literally seen competitors sites have a page on "WordPress Security" rank on the first page of Google with absolutely no content, an empty page. I see a lot of the Moz posts are huge, thosands of words, and I know they perform very well (and they also have ton's of links / PR...etc) and I just want to do the right thing. I know sites like http://www.seerinteractive.com/our-services/search-engine-optimization have relatively short info pages as well. Thanks in advance for your feedback. Zachary Russell President, ProTech Internet Group
On-Page Optimization | | Zachary_Russell0 -
Which pages on my site should I back link to
The majority of the back links I have been creating link directly to our home page and to the store page. Is this the best approach or should I be trying to spread the links throughout our site to include product categories and subcategories etc?
On-Page Optimization | | Hardley0 -
Do anchor links pointing to bottom/top of page count as link?
As the title says: Do anchor links pointing to bottom/top of page count as link? This page: http://www.betxpert.com/forum/bookmakere/vis/ladbrokes-kommentar I has over 300 links, but I don't see that many links. Is it the "#15" and the top/bottom of page anchors that count? Is this harmful in terms of link juice? -Rasmus
On-Page Optimization | | rasmusbang0 -
Why home page ranks higher than keyword-optimized page
We have a page that is optimized for the keyword "job scheduling". A search on the keyword "job scheduling" results in this page not ranking at all, while our home page (uc4.com) ranks third. Could you provide some ideas/suggestions as to why this would be the case and how to make our job scheduling page rank higher? Thanks, claudia
On-Page Optimization | | claudmar0 -
Link cannibalization
My on page report card gives me an "A" in every category but "link cannibalization". The key word is I am targeting is "home care". It says my links to "home care blog" and "in home care agency locator" are cannibalizing my home page. Am I indeed causing problems by using these modified versions of the keyword? Also is it okay to have the link "home care" for the home link in the main navigation bar? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | mmaes0