2 links on home page to each category page ..... is page rank being watered down?
-
I am working on a site that has a home page containing 2 links to each category page. One of the links is a text link and one link is an image link.
I think I'm right in thinking that Google will only pay attention to the anchor text/alt text of the first link that it spiders with the anchor text/alt text of the second being ignored.
This is not my question however. My question is about the page rank that is passed to each category page.....
Because of the double links on the home page, my reckoning is that PR is being divided up twice as many times as necessary. Am I also right in thinking that if Google ignore the 2nd identical link on a page only one lot of this divided up PR will be passed to each category page rather than 2 lots ..... hence horribly watering down the 'link juice' that is being passed to each category page??
Please help me win this argument with a developer and improve the ranking potential of the category pages on the site
-
I guess as with most things SEO .... I'll test it.
Thanks both for joining the discussion.
I'll post results ... if indeed there are any.
-
To concur with what Brent has said above; although we know that Google divides the PR passed around from links on a page, we don't know exactly how much by, or in some cases, they can actually just ignore the duplicate link.
I wouldn't worry too much about this particular case to be honest. It would be more of an issue if there were 10-15 links all pointing to the category page on each page of the website.
You could, however, maybe do a test over the space of a month or so by removing the second link and see if you get any noticeable improvement in rankings. If you do this, I would be quite interested to see the results, so let me know.
Matt.
-
Since we truly don't know Google's secret recipe, we can't say if PR is split.
I don't believe you will loose any Link Juice with duplicate links. You can have 10 links to the same url, but Google only sees this as 1 url.
Interesting article on SEOmoz:
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/an-internal-link-juice-tool-14969
Interesting PR tool from that article: (PageRank Link Juice Calculator)
http://www.ecreativeim.com/pagerank-link-juice-calculator.php
I read a comment from SEOmoz's Dr. Pete:
"Google sometimes views navigation differently, but it's a bit hard to say. My general assumption with Google ignoring 2nd (3rd, etc.) links to the same Page B from any Page A, is that they ignore those links completely. Since they don't pass PR and their anchor text doesn't count, I'd tend to treat that page as if it had 10 links. If anyone has evidence to the contrary, I'd certainly love to hear it."
View Post: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-many-links-is-too-many#jtc131211
-
Hi Matt,
Thanks for confirming my thoughts.
What I forgot to mention is that the 2 links to same category pages is being done from the sites main navigation (i.e not just an issue on home page). Therefore, i'm thinking that when all this lost PR is added up it could be incredibly damaging to the ranking potential of the category pages. What would you think?
-
Hey there,
You've pretty much hit the nail on the head with all of your comments.
1. Google will only really pay attention to the first link that it crawls and not really pass on any link juice through the second.
2. By having the two links, you will be watering down the amount of PR that is being sent over to page.
If the image is next to the text link, you could just wrap them both in the same hyperlink (obviously if they are not next to each other then there is no point.
One thing that I would say is that this isn't going to be an incredibly damaging thing toward your SEO, so you need to sum up whether it really adds to the user experience and conversion potential and see if this is outweighed by the decrease in SEO. Once you have decided which one wins, make your choice there.
Hope this helps.
Matt.
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
-
Question about spammy links to 404 Pages we never created ...
FYI I'm a beginner within the company, so this might be a basic question, but ...I was going through open site explorer and checking www.partnermd.com for opportunities to reclaim links and I found a bunch of 404 pages that we never created that had nothing to do with the business. Out of curiousity, I plugged in one of the weird links like this one:http://www.partnermd.com/images/2015-best-space-heater-best-wers.html into open site explorer and found several bad spammy links pointing to it. When I clicked on one of them I got a notice that the site might have been hacked.I did some research and it looks like Google doesn't penalize you for spammy links to 404 pages, but how do we prevent this from occurring in the first place if possible?
Technical SEO | | WhittingtonConsulting1 -
404's in WMT are old pages and referrer links no longer linking to them.
Within the last 6 days, Google Webmaster Tools has shown a jump in 404's - around 7000. The 404 pages are from our old browse from an old platform, we no longer use them or link to them. I don't know how Google is finding these pages, when I check the referrer links, they are either 404's themselves or the page exists but the link to the 404 in question is not on the page or in the source code. The sitemap is also often referenced as a referrer but these links are definitely not in our sitemap and haven't been for some time. So it looks to me like the referrer data is outdated. Is that possible? But somehow these pages are still being found, any ideas on how I can diagnose the problem and find out how google is finding them?
Technical SEO | | rock220 -
Listing Categories on each page versus in the drop-down navigation; which is better for SEO
My client, www.warehouse-lighting.com, has all the links to its category pages on a left-side navigation structure. Their competitor, www.prolighting.com has all of its category-page links listed under the drop-down menu of the top-level navigation. I’m wondering if one way is better than the other for SEO and why?
Technical SEO | | TopFloor1 -
Paginated Home Page Duplicates on Wordpress Sites
A number of my websites created on WP are displaying duplicate home pages with these types of urls. http://www.example.com/page/10/ http://www.example.com/page/11/ http://www.example.com/page/12/ I found these duplicates using the site:search command. Basically, put in any number and the Home Page opens. With the above mentioned url structure. Any idea on why they are created, how they can be stopped and what kind of an impact they would have in terms of SEO and the penalty that comes with duplicate content.
Technical SEO | | AsadMemon1 -
Home Page Indexing Question/Problem
Hello Everyone, Background: I recently decided to change the preferred domain settings in WM Tools from the non www version of my site to the www version. I did this because there is a redirect from the non www to the www and I've built all of my internal links with the www. Everything I read on SEO Moz seemed to indicate that this was a good move. Traffic has been down/volatile but I think it's attributable mostly to a recent site change/redesign. Having said that the preferred domain change did seem to drop traffic an additional notch. I made the move two weeks ago. Here is the question: When I google my site, the home page shows up as the site title without the custom title tags I've written. The page that displays in the SERP is still the non www version of the site. a site:www.mysite.com search shows an internal page first but doesn't return the home page as a result. All other pages pop up indexed with the www version of the page. a site:mysite.com (notice lack of www) search DOES SHOW my home page and my custom title tags but with a non www version of the page. All other pages pop up indexed with the www version of the page. Any one have thoughts on this? Is this a classic example of waiting on Google to catch up with the changes to my tiny little site?
Technical SEO | | JSOC0 -
Lost ranking once optimised a page
Hello, we're a new member of SEOMOZ and love it but have a problem. Obviously the reason for joining is to learn more about SEO and hopefully get our website ranked a lot better than it currently is. However, one particular page we've chosen to optimise (based on your tips) has since lost ranking and we can no longer find it in the searches. Is there a reason for this? We've only made the on page changes you suggested and also added more external and internal links so I can't understand why it would no longer be listed in the searches? I look forward to your reply/feedback. Many thanks Peter
Technical SEO | | mybabyradio0 -
I have pages that are showing up as having too many links, yet they are noindexed.
I've got several pages that have "too many on page links" and the pages mentioned have already been noindexed. Do these pages need to be no followed too? Here's one of the pages: http://digisavvy.com/site-map/. There's several pages like this, most of which are category or tag archives, which I've noindexed... Do I need to nofollow these, too?
Technical SEO | | digisavvy0 -
How to optimize achor text links on ecommerce category page
A category page on an e-commerce sites, containing a list of the products within the category, usually shows the product image above the product text link. If both image and anchor text link to the product page, this would mean that the image is counted as the link in terms of ranking value. What would be the best way to make the anchor text count in stead of the image? I guess some ways would be: 1. Not making the product image a link
Technical SEO | | DeptAgency
2. Using some kind of link masking / redirecting technique for the image
3. Employing a technical trick to make the anchor text link come first in the code readable by search engines. What would be the easiest way to solve this issue? Or do you believe it's not worth bothering?0