Too Many On-Page Links
-
Most of my pages have "Too Many On-Page Links".
If you view the website you will see this is mainly down to the top navigation drop down menu: http://www.cwesolutions.co.uk
So if I wanted to reduce the number of links I would have to have category links with landing pages.
How much does having "Too Many On-Page Links" effect my website ranking? Is it really important and would I notice a difference if I changed it?
-
In the sense that a report is alerting that there are too many links on a page though is going to be because it is warning of authority leakage more than anything else though.
Granted, the insertion of 'just' in my previous statement probably misleads...
I agree though that if you were to link every page to every page, it would just cause a royal headache to crawlers - why one would do that though is beyond me.
-
Sorry Pete, that was a typo where I meant to say 'internal linkage is classed differently as external linkage' (I've amended my reply).
-
To say "linking just dilutes the authority from the page" is not strictly true.
In this particular instance I do not believe that the menu is too OTT in terms of links but if you have every page linking to every page you just end up creating a mesh of links that search engines can waste crawl time trying to decipher.
Too many links with poor structure can mean that your crawl allocation is wasted which results in less of your pages being indexed properly.
-
Thanks Geoff, but want did you mean here...
Internal linkage is classed differently as internal linkage?
-
What makes you think you have too many on page links? Internal linkage is classed differently as external linkage, linking just dilutes the authority from the page (amongst other crawlability and usability factors), but if it's internal linkage, at least the authority is kept on your domain.
Simple, effective and easy to use navigation is critical to website usability and will have an affect on performance in search engines. In your example, I wouldn't expect any negative ranking affects to occur as a result of the style of navigation menu your website utilises. If that is deemed most useful for your customers, then that's the best approach.
-
Use a tool such as SEOmoz' Crawl Test or Xenu's Link Sleuth to determine any crawling issues. There are a number of free online tools for this too.
-
Thanks for your reply and explanation. One more question... How would I know if the bots are having a problem crawling my website?
-
Too many links on a page can make it difficult for bots to crawl your site. If you have over 100 links on page, make certain you have a sitemap that lays out a road map for the bots.
If your site is being effectively crawled, don't worry about it. I would worry if the linking structure is impacting the user experience or if deeper pages weren't getting crawled.
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
-
404 errors & old unused pages
I am using shopify and I need to delete some old pages which are coming up as 404 errors (product no longer available!) does anyone know where you go to delete these pages which are no longer needed?
Web Design | | carleyb0 -
Footer links on my site... bad for passing page rank?
i've been told that it is possible that google discounts the weight or page rank passed in footer links of websites and my website has the navigation to many of my pages in the footer of each page. My whole website is about 20 pages so each page has links to the 5 most popular pages at the top and the rest of the links are in the footer of each page. Am i losing page rank by having these links in the footer? Should i make my navigation different? I have lots of articles on my site so i thought it might be not only helpful to my readers but give my pages an seo boost if i placed in context links in the body of my articles to other pages of my site. Does this sound like a good idea? Thanks mozzers! Thanks mozzers!
Web Design | | Ron100 -
Content thin for new home page been told to change it? any suggestions?
Hi guys, I'm newbie.... I have been told that my home page is content thin, and if I want to rank really well in the search i need to have more relevant content on my homepage - the site is only new 2months and I can see we are now at 39th place in the search, if i make changes to the home page design and add more content will this effect this current ranking?
Web Design | | edward-may0 -
Advice needed: Google crawling for single page applicartions with java script
Hi Moz community,we have a single page application (enjoywishlist.com) with a lot of content in java script light boxes. There is a lot of valuable content embedded but google can not crawl the content and we can missing out on some opportunities as a result. I was wondering if someone was able to solve a similar issue (besides moving the content from the java script to the HTML body). There appears to be a few services sprouting up to handle single page applications and crawling in google.http://getseojs.com/https://prerender.io/Did anyone use these services? Some feedback would be much appreciated!ThanksAndreas
Web Design | | AndreasD0 -
Responsive design to serve different page for IE8 - SEO Implications?
A client is planning on developing a responsive designed website which redirects visitors using IE8 to a static webpage that encourages users to visit in another browser. What are the SEO implications of a server redirect just for IE8 visitors? Possible solutions: would containing a link on the static page to "continue browsing" and give the visitor access to the entire site in IE8 work well? Or should a CSS overlay message appear to IE8 visitors, no redirect, that encourages them to visit in another browser? Or serving a separate stylesheet for IE8 visitors, and not giving a responsive experience be optimal? Any suggestions or thoughts are appreciated. Cheers, Alex
Web Design | | Alex.Weintraub0 -
Link juice passing from a .org.uk link to a .org/uk websites
Hi all, A client I am working on had a CMS built in recently which has resulted in all their canonicals tags being taken off the website, and as such the same page with both a .org/uk and .org.uk/uk domain have appeared in the search results and I am wondering what your guys take is on the best cause of action. For further background: Historically they have always used .org.uk/uk (not sure why) for their UK website and used .org/xxx for other countries (they also have a .org splashpage FYI). Having seen the .org/uk pages, and knowing they have to choose one to avoid duplication, they would like to move their uk website to the .org/uk domain to fit in with the rest of the divisions. However due to the historical use of .org.uk/uk their backlink profile contains links to both the .org.uk and .org domains. My question then: would a canonical tag on all the .org.uk/uk pages pointing to the .org/uk pages be strong enough to pass on link juice to the .org/uk pages (from all links pointing to .org.uk) or would a 301 redirect be required in this instance, or indeed would it be best to stay with the .org.uk/uk domain? Thanks, Diana
Web Design | | Diana.varbanescu0 -
Linking to an image with the keyword in the title and alt tags.
Hi guys, Just thought I'd ask for opinions about an ecommerce catalog I'm working on. I don't know if it's even worth worrying about, but here's the scenario. Let's say I'm linking to a category called 'Sale' using an image, I have the title tag of the link as 'Sale', the image title is also 'Sale' as well as the alt tag. The HTML looks like this: Sale The page itself is: http://www.fashionbasicsonline.com/catDisplay So my question is, do you think I'm stuffing the keyword in too many times there? It's CMS driven so I could have the alt tag as 'Sale Products' or one of the titles as 'Sale Catalog' perhaps, do you think there would be a benefit in doing that? Maybe it's microoptimisation and I should be looking at other low hanging fruit, but I'm just trying to come up with the best scenario. Would love to hear what you think. Cheers, Bruce p.s. Looking forward to meeting as many people as possible at MozCon next week 🙂
Web Design | | bruce_werdschinski0 -
Spammy page titles and the consequences
Hiya Mozzers! A pal who works in SEO has suggested I add the following type <title>tag structure to my pages:<br /><br />Bars in New York - Bars New York [no brand name]</p> <p>Pizzas in New York - Pizzas New York [no brand name]</p> <p>Firstly, I think this looks spammy, secondly, can't understand the logic of both combinations, thirdly, my understanding is brand name lessens importance of keyphrases, but it's still important from a branding point of view.</p> <p>Fourthly, is this sustainable? I mean, Google could identify this as spammy in the future, with penalty, no? Any feedback on these points would be very useful.</p> <p>Also, he said that I should play around with title tags on an ongoing basis, but I haven't changed any single title tag more than once/6 months for fear of being flagged for manipulative SEO practice by Google. Guidance here would be great as well.</p> <p>Thanking you in advance, Luke</p></title>
Web Design | | McTaggart0