Too many On-Page Links on a WP based Website
-
Hi,
I've already browsed through various of the Q&As on the "too many On-Page links" issue, but I would really need some advice concerning a WP Site with a dropdown navigation.
As outlined in the on-page report, every site has about 180 outgoing links, which pretty much is the number of site featured in the navigation. Even though the 100 link limit is somewhat outdated I'm still worried about the distribution of linkjuice from the starting page and how Google perceives the importance of the various pages.
Would it make sense to adapt the structure of the navigation, so that the starting page only links to the 5 category pages and the category pages only link to the detail pages they contain?
The site has good rankings for several pages and I assume that Google can tell that the large number of links is caused by the navigation. But with every page having appr. 180 links it may be difficult for Google to tell, which of those pages are the most important regarding internal link structure...
Looking foward to your opinion and insights!
Cheers,
Chris
-
If you decide you absolutely must use tags I recommend creating or buying a wordpress theme that only shows post excerpts on the tag pages. That should help with duplicate content.
Categories in WordPress are better for SEO b/c wordpress stores a description for categories and SEO plugins can grab this descrption and add it to the meta descrption tag in your posts HTML header.
-
No probs you too
-
Hi Craig,
that's exactly what I was thinking about, having 5 hub/category pages with the relvant pages in them. makes perfect sense
Thanks for the advice concerning the tags, I'll have a look at it!
Have a nice weekend!
Cheers,
Chris -
I see
I don't really think it's a massive problem but to improve it why dont you take out the drop downs so rather then everything being one click away its 2 clicks
For example turn the parent pages into hubs of that category and this will cut down total number of links on pages across the site.
I hope that made sense
Also I noticed your using tags, I advise against these but if your going to use them you should noindex, follow these pages I checked a few and they were indexed.
This of course can cause duplicate content issues.
-
Hi Craig,
thanks for the quick reply!
I see your point in putting Usability before SEO-related concerns
The site has thematically clear structure and pages are grouped into meaningful categories. The thing I am concerned about is the structure of the navigation itself.
For Example: Given the current Navigation, if you're on any detail page, you can select any other category pages or detail pages from other categories, thats why there are so many Links per Page. Of course, this is very convenient, as you can navigate from a 3rd level page of Category A to any other page in just one click.
The question now is, whether this type of navigation has a disadvantage in terms of On-Page Optimization, or if it doesn't really matter as Google can tell that the high number of links on every site is simply caused by the navigation.
I forgot to post the link, by the way: http:www.hlm.at/
-
Hey Christoph,
I think you should be more concerned by your users navigating the site rather than Google. I don't think it's really that important on the amount of link but rather the type of link and where they are on your site.
If I were you I would work on your site architecture and create a better navigation for your users and an organised site will of course be crawled better.
Also organising your site into a few categories will help the engines to sort and better understand your site and it's content but don't go over board and remember categories are a tool to help you organise your site, so pages shouldn't really need multiple categories.
Hope this helps
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
-
Product Page Links
I have a product category page at https://www.hurtlegear.com.au/s1000rr/ which currently has 38 products on it. Problem is, all the product titles start with the name of the text: "bmw s1000rr" (because that's what they are) - so that means there are 38 anchored internal links on that page, all starting with the same keyword. You can see how that might look to the Google crawler. Recently that page dropped from around 15 to outside the top 100, and Moz tells me that the page is keyword stuffed with "bmw s1000rr" (no suprise) so I'm guessing that may be the reason the page has disappeared out of the SERPs. I don't really want to change all the product titles (then they wouldn't make sense) so I'm just wondering if there is any way around this? Is there some way of telling Google that this is a product category page and therefore to ignore the anchor text in all of those product links? Can/should the links have some kind of markup on them? Or is the page beyond help? Basically I'm looking at a way of keeping the product titles as they are, but avoiding a page penalty from Google somehow. I'm a bit of a newbie, any suggestions would be most appreciated. Cheers, Graeme
On-Page Optimization | | graeme720 -
Renamed a page and created a 301, page lost its rankings.
We changed a page name to fall under the root of our site from domain.com/page1/page301d/ to domain.com/page301d/ and after 2 weeks it still is not back to its #3 position. Now it is on the bottom of page 3. I cant figure out what im doing wrong here. The original .com/page1/ that this page fell under was removed totally and redirected to antoher page that was more relevant. I went ahead and re-enabled this page and its contnent, because the page was linking out to the page we 301d. This page we re-enabled had about 150 links poitning to it and therefore i was thinking that maybe the link juice from this page (or relevancy) via an internal link was helping it rank. This was updated about 6 days ago and the internal link is back Any other ideas why this might not be working. Ive checked all the 301s, content has not changed on the page. We have updated the strcuture for many pages. Instead of having the pages in question fall under anotehr page, they all fall under the root and its sub content is now only 2 levels deep , instead of being 3. hope that makese sense.
On-Page Optimization | | waqid0 -
Single Page on my client's website is not crawling and indexing new changes. What could be the possible reason?
I made several changes on client's website on different pages, changed titles, add content on few pages, moved blog from subdomain to sub directory. Everything is crawled but there is one page on the website (not part of the blog) that isn't getting crawled in Google and picking up changes. The last crawl of the website is 2 days back whereas that page was last crawled on 30th sep. I just wanted to know the possible reasons and has anyone encountered this before?
On-Page Optimization | | MoosaHemani0 -
Nofollow links to own website pages
To preserve link juice should I "nofollow" links to about us and contact us pages that appear at the top of our navigation? I read this article - but I am not familiar with the authenticity: http://www.eminentseo.com/blog/navigation-menu-optimization-best-practices/ Thanks Mike
On-Page Optimization | | henandstag0 -
Too many on-page links
Hi, I've apparently got too many on-page links on 79 of my webpages. The majority of these pages are category pages, like this: https://www.turnkeymortgages.co.uk/mortgage-advice/mortgages/... so, what's a person to do? Obviously the page would be useless without the links. Should I just ignore these 'errors'? Or is there something else I should do? I don't want to appear manipulative by labelling them nofollow... Thanks, Amelia
On-Page Optimization | | CommT0 -
Jquery in top of page vs text on bottom page
Is it the best way to use jquery sliders on the top of your page to still get all your text above the fold and score in search engines? for example: http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-conte... is much better to score high ranks in search engines than http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-conte... ?? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | HMK-NL0 -
How to fix duplicate page content and page titles?
Apologies in advance if this has already been answered (it probably has) - I'm just not seeing it. Is there a guide on here for how to fix the issues brought up by the crawler - specifically, things like duplicate page content, or duplicate page titles? A lot of these seem to have been created by wordpress.org combos that I didn't anticipate - i.e., category pages, author pages, etc. The crawler brings up the problems, but I don' t know where to start to go about fixing them. Also, any guide on best SEO practices or fixing optimization problems, specifically for wordpress.org blogs, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | prospects1 -
Links to subfolders
Hi everyone, I would like to know your opinion on this. Do you feel like optimizing, especially pointing links to a subfolder, e.g. www.domain.com/en/ (english language), should be the same as doing that for the main URL (another language)? That said, do you think all the domain will benefit from anchors to subfolders? Thanks a lot!
On-Page Optimization | | SEOpt0