How is link juice split between navigation?
-
Hey All, I am trying to understand link juice as it relates to duplicate navigation
Take for example a site that has a main navigation contained in dropdowns containing 50 links (fully crawl-able and indexable), then in the footer of said page that navigation is repeated so you have a total of 100 links with the same anchor text and url. For simplicity sake will the link juice be divided among those 100 and passed to the corresponding page or does the "1st link rule" still apply and thus only half of the link juice will be passed?
What I am getting at is if there was only one navigation menu and the page was passing 50 link juice units then each of the subpages would get passed 1link juice unit right? but if the menu is duplicated than the possible link juice is divided by 100 so only .5 units are being passed through each link. However because there are two links pointing to the same page is there a net of 1 unit?
We have several sites that do this for UX reasons but I am trying to figure out how badly this could be hurting us in page sculpting and passing juice to our subpages.
Thanks for your help! Cheers.
-
Hi Keri,
thanks for the follow up. As for the specific question no I have not really found a concrete answer. Currently we have left the duplicate navigation alone and focused on more pressing updates. Sorry that I don't have more info to share.
-
Hi Joshua,
I'm following up on older unanswered questions, and wondering what you decided to do in this case. Did you change anything, or leave it as is? Do you have anything interesting to share with us that you learned?
Thanks!
-
Hey Damien, thanks for the response. Ya I had originally thought about no following one set of links but then found out what you just pointed out, that the nofollow doesn't work that way anymore. We actually have more links then that per page (that just happens to be a round number) but what I am trying to figure out is since about half of them are duplicates am I really losing anything? since they only link to about 50 unique pages are those pages being passed the same amount of juice as they would be if they were only being linked to once per page (instead of being linked to in the main nav and footer)?
-
I'd be wary of having so many links on one page. I say 100 links is a max per page but obviously I'm sure there's going to be sites out there that rank with more than that; but as a general rule...
You used to be able to add nofollow to your links and preserve your PR but I believe if you add that now the link will get no juice and you still lose some. It's more of a 'I don't sponsor this' sort of thing. Hope I explained myself okay there!
DD
-
Thanks for posting. I understand what chapter four says but it doesn't seem to answer my question. My understanding is that google only counts the first link on a page when passing link juice although it splits link juice across all of the links on a page. So according to this understanding only the navigation contained in the dropdowns at the top of the page will pass link juice, thus only half of the possible link juice is passed since the links in the footer don't pass any juice (even though they are factored in to how much juice each link passes). Is that a correct understanding? The example in the book does not discuss what happens to how link juice is calculated and passed when two links on one page point to the same subpage.
-
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
-
Internal Linking Conundrum
Hello I have a web site with a menu structure with three levels Top Level (Single Item) > First Level (Single Item) > Second Level (Multiple Items) The first level pages do not rank well. The top level and second level pages rank well. Search Console acknowledges 600 internal links to the top level. 600 to the second level. But only 100 to the first level. This is true across 6 top level items. It is not to do with page level links. It just isn't acknowledging all the links to the first level. Does anyone know why this might be? Thanks for any assistance you can give me.
Web Design | | Andrew-SEO0 -
Do more links from sub-domains to domain (website) hurt rankings?
Hi all, If there are multiple sub-domains like abc.website.com, 123.website.com, etc...and if the top pages of website are linked from multiple sub-domains via top menu or footer links; will this hurts? Will too much interlinking of few top pages of a website from it's sub-domains dilute link juice? How many links ideally we can add to website from a sub-domain? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Does anyone know of an easy way to create jump links in WordPress without having to hardcode it into the HTML?
I am using Genesis Framework with the New Pro child theme on my site called Learn Internet Grow and when I create long articles I like to have a menu so readers can jump to a specific section. I wonder if there is a best practice for how to create jump links quickly without having to switch between the code editor and the post editor. There are a bunch of plugins but I am wary of adding more. Maybe if someone can tell me about one they had a good experience with. Ideally, a resource that shows you how to create a custom plugin for this or a non-plugin way to alter the framework to enable easy jump linking.
Web Design | | LearnInternetGrow0 -
Can external links in a menu attract a penalty?
We have some instances of external links (i.e. pointing to another domain) in site menus. Although there are legitimate reasons (e.g. linking to a news archive kept on a separate domain) I understand this can be considered bad from a usability perspective. This begs the question - is this bad for SEO? With the recent panda changes we've seen certain issues which were previously "only" about usability attract SEO penalties, but I can't find any references to this example. Anyone have thoughts / experience?
Web Design | | SOS_Children0 -
New more "helpful" internal linking causing SERP & traffic drop?
Still dealing with the weird traffic drop on my website. I have removed a bunch of old links from a defunct blog, 301 thin pages, added text to remaining pages. I'm still stumped. So awhile ago I freshened up my website and thought I was "helping people" by making sure they could CONTACT the studio more easily... I added more links to the "contact page" I thought this would help conversions...This changed the number of links to my entire site....Would this be the problem with my ranking/traffic drop? http://bayareaboudoir.com/babinternal1.pdf
Web Design | | Squee1 -
Worth Splitting Up Main Site into Several Microsites?
The company I work for offers a variety of very different products, that are sold to different audiences. Right now (and for the past 4 years) all the products have been listed on one main website. Over the years, we have accumulated over 200,000 links and rank relatively well in most of the product-specific keywords. Still, for business purposes we really feel that having a unique site specific to each product would be more beneficial than having them all on one site. What are the pros and cons of making a move to different subdomains from a main site. (i.e. instead of www.cleanedison.com/solar we would set up a solar.cleanedison.com)
Web Design | | CleanEdisonInc0 -
Google penalty for links opening in new tab?
Our web services provided suggested that Google doesn't like in-text links that open the link in a new tab. Can anyone verify this? We often link to outside credible resources for our audience, though it seems smarter to open in a new tab rather than risk that the person will not navigate back to our site after finding us. Thank you in advance!
Web Design | | jhamlin0 -
How does the "first link" rule work with the "reasonable surfer patent" when it comes to the main navigation for a website?
In trying to figure out navigation for a new website, I am struggling with the first link rule vs. the reasonable surfer patent where the first link rule implies that Google "counts" the first link to a page including navigation, and the reasonable surfer patent that implies that navigation links carry less weight than body copy links. What is the best solution for creating main navigation so that it doesn't take away from the body copy links?
Web Design | | cindyt-170380