Limiting On Page Links
-
Right now, we have about 160 or so links on the home page. It's been recommended that we keep it to under 100, though that's not as big of a deal as it once was.
Is it helpful to make a bunch of those links "nofollow" in order to preserve link juice? Is it going to make a difference, or be at all helpful? I assume it won't be harmful, especially as a bunch of them are to the same page but on different sections of the page.
Would live your advice and thoughts! Thanks!
-
Brent and Syed are correct - nofollow no longer preserves link-juice. As for the 100-links "rule", it's really just a guideline. I discuss it in depth here:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-many-links-is-too-many
It's really a balancing act - the more links you have, the less love each link gets. It's not just SEOs - it's true for visitors, too (as Ryan pointed out). More options isn't always a good thing.
The trick is that the balance really depends a lot on the site. I've seen sites with 160 links that were well-designed with ample authority to make that work. I've seen others with 80 links where it was a complete mess.
It's also important to note that links to the same Page B on any Page A are discounted by Google - so, if you have a link in the navigation and then a link to that same page in the content and footer, the 2nd and 3rd links are basically ignored. We still count them as part of the 100, but Google doesn't in most cases. It's a little tricky, since Google probably views navigation links differently from contextual (in-page) links, but the rule still generally holds. Only one link to any Page B from Page A is going to get counted.
-
Thanks everyone. I really appreciate all your help!
-
Making links 'nofollow' to preserve link juice is a thing of the past. As of now, the "link juice" that you think you 'saved' just vanishes into thin air. Meaning, if you do use 'Nofollow' on links, you won't be saving it and passing it on to others.
100 links on page is just a broad suggestion for most websites. Our website have 180 links on homepage and we rank pretty well.
-
Even if you make the links nofollow, you will still lose link juice.
Just focus on putting your best links towards the top.
Here is a great post explaining why you still will lose link juice.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-maybe-changes-how-the-pagerank-algorithm-handles-nofollow
-
That will be helpful to preserve your link juice, but it won't make the site easier to navigate for your users. Ideally you want a "flat" and "wide" site architecture. Inbound.org recently had an article on this exact topic.
I'm not sure no-following those duplicate links is going to do a whole lot, other than spread your "link juice" more evenly around your site. For example, if 60 of your 160 links are duplicated (meaning theres another link going to a different anchor on the same URL), that means those 60 pages are getting hosed with link juice twice, and your other 40 pages with only 1 link will get half as much of it. If each URL has only 1 followed link from the homepage, then your homepages link juice will flow more or less evenly across all the pages.
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
-
2 Similar Pages
Hello, I have two very similar pages. The first page is an apartment rental page with a map, rental listings and some neighborhood data below. The neighborhood data includes useful info about the area with photos, text about the area, crime rates, avg. rental rates, etc. The second page is a neighbourhood guide that includes virtually the same data as the rental page, but in longer form ie. more photos, more text, etc. I want the rental page to rank, while ranking the neighborhood page is not important as it would be used more for link bait. But since the information on the two pages is the same, I don't want them to compete with each other. I'm thinking of putting a cannonical tag on the neighborhood page pointing back to the rental page. Is that the correct thing to do in this instance? Thanks for your help. J
On-Page Optimization | | torontojon0 -
Problem with internal links.
Hello,I am trying to do an audit of the internal links of my site at zenplugs.com. I am having great difficulty simply trying to establish how many internal links there are on the home page. Off the top of my head I think there are probably 20-25 but Screaming Frog tells me there are 574, the MozBar is listing zero and Open Site Explorer is telling me my site hasn't been indexed yet. I have tried several web based services but most of them don't work. Can anyone recommend a tool which has given them a number they trust? My second query is that one of the tools told me that there are 4 links on the home page with no anchor text, linking to http://zenplugs.com/#. Is this a problem? Many thanks, in advance. Toby
On-Page Optimization | | T0BY0 -
Wordpress Post as Slideshow - One long page vs many short pages?
We are working on implementing a slideshow format for some of the posts on a website, and it appears that using this format breaks a long post into several shorter pages. That's what we want from a user experience standpoint, but are wondering if there are negative SEO implications from having the content broken up in this way, and whether search engines will view it as one longer page or several very short pages? Here is an example: http://www.forthebestrate.com/10-cheap-ideas-for-summer-fun/ Thanks for the help!
On-Page Optimization | | ILM_Marketing0 -
Link Structure
On my site I have a dropdown menu going across the page at the top to all of my categories on each page, I also have a similar structure going down the side going to the same categories, is this acceptable or would Google count this as double the internal links?
On-Page Optimization | | Palmbourne0 -
What kind of pages are they?
Hi all, after making an analysis of my website the tool has found two pages that I don't know what refers to: /?page id=2058 (only one page of this kind) /?attachment id= (only one page of this kind) does anyone know what kind of pages they could be? Do the have relevancy regading SEO? The plattform is Wordpress. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Why a page with an On Page A grade has a less good rank than a page with a F grade?
Why a page with an On Page A grade is ranked 17 in Google when the home page with a F grade is ranked 9 ? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Amadeus_eBC0 -
Page Analyzer & Page 1
I follow the recommended things from the Page Analyzer or Grader, and I am like position #40, so how do I get to page #1 as a minimum.
On-Page Optimization | | sansonj0 -
What are the benefits of targeting one keyword phrase per page vs. multiple keywords per page
What are the benefits of optimizing a page for one keyword phrase versus a group of similar keywords, like this one that Rand posted on another blog entry http://bit.ly/7LzTxY: Ted Baker Ted Baker London Ted Baker Clothing Ted Baker Mens Ted Baker Mens Clothing Ted Baker Mens Collection
On-Page Optimization | | EricVallee340