Counting over-optimised links - do internal links count too?
-
To whit:
In working out whether I've too many over-optimised links pointing to my homepage, do I look at just external links -- or also the links from my internal pages to my homepage?
In other words, can a natural link profile from internal pages help dilute overoptimisation from external links?
-
Over-optimized internal links can only harm you, you are in direct control of those, external links you are not. So I would do everything you can on your site to show Google that you are not trying to game the system and that includes well but not over optimized internal linking. Paul answered your question well though.
-
Paul is definitely on the money with that answer. However I would not worry at all about internal links being over optimized you're speaking your internal links linking to each other inside your page home to about for more L juice. Talking about just having the correct anchor text on I believe it's one of the last places you can actually use anchor text your advantage. However
I would not start destroying the inside of your website for changing the photographs that you may have put the correct Alt. text and names for that you could still rank for in order to alleviate penalty brought on by inbound external links.
My suggestion is that you keep your page internally optimized because you need kugels meal to crawl it correctly. And those things still do matter it's pretty easy Rangifer photos videos things like that I would not tear apart. I would however show Google that you're doing good by creating substance and really working hard at it.
I know everybody says that and listen man I know it's easier said than done so I'm not trying to tell you there's an easy way out if you're interested of this. However my belief is if you start creating quality content you can only do the best you can do and without that you're not going to trick Google for a living so Call the rules and don't worry so much about over optimization and things like that unless it is really something that has been brought to your attention by Google because people get paranoid that category but what Paul said is true I am certain Google's algorithm keeps everything into account that you've done inside your site and off.
My belief is that Google is getting more into who we are personally and the point of regarding of Trying to figure out just who we actually are what our intentions are thery read your email Google apps for Gmail. But they have everything they have all the information so I think that might start playing a hand in the algorithms.
-
In my experience, this is a "worst of both worlds" situation, Jeepster.
Over-optimised internal linking can definitely cause harm, but well-optimized internal links can't make up for over-optimised externals.
If you think of this from the search engines' perspective, it wouldn't really make sense to allow you to alleviate spammy external tactics by being a "good boy" on your own site. Especially when external incoming links are likely a much more important ranking factor than internal links.
That's my .02.
Paul
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
-
Linking to External Websites?
Is it good to link external websites from every page. Since, the on-page grader shows there should be one link pointing to an external source. I have a website that can point to an external website from every page using the brand name of the specific site like deal sites do have. Is it worth having external link on every page, of-course with a no-follow tag?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
Internal links and URL shortners
Hi guys, what are your thoughts using bit.ly links as internal links on blog posts of a website? Some posts have 4/5 bit.ly links going to other pages of our website (noindexed pages). I have nofollowed them so no seo value is lost, also the links are going to noindexed pages so no need to pass seo value directly. However what are your thoughts on how Google will see internal links which have essential become re-direct links? They are bit.ly links going to result pages basically. Am I also to assume the tracking for internal links would also be better using google analytics functionality? is bit.ly accurate for tracking clicks? Any advice much appreciated, I just wanted to double check this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pauledwards0 -
Do banners pass link juice
Hello there, If we place an animated gif banner on a website will this pass link juice in the same way as if we just had a link? Obviously the website would need to be "Follow" Thanks Robert
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | roberthseo0 -
Page Count in Webmaster Tools Index Status Versus Page Count in Webmaster Tools Sitemap
Greeting MOZ Community: I run www.nyc-officespace-leader.com, a real estate website in New York City. The page count in Google Webmaster Tools Index status for our site is 850. The page count in our Webmaster Tools Sitemap is 637. Why is there a discrepancy between the two? What does the Google Webmaster Tools Index represent? If we filed a removal request for pages we did not want indexed, will these pages still show in the Google Webmaster Tools page count despite the fact that they no longer display in search results? The number of pages displayed in our Google Webmaster Tools Index remains at about 850 despite the removal request. Before a site upgrade in June the number of URLs in the Google Webmaster Tools Index and Google Webmaster Site Map were almost the same. I am concerned that page bloat has something to do with a recent drop in ranking. Thanks everyone!! Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
What Are Latest Internal Linking Strategies?
I have been doing a little research, but all the articles are really old. Even the Moz site page is pretty old. So I am wondering, has the strategy changed? Is it OK to still use internal links with your keywords in them? Do you have multiple links on a page? What about a blog post? Do you no follow? What are the thoughts out there on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | netviper0 -
Link Juice + multiple links pointing to the same page
Scenario
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch
The website has a menu consisting of 4 links Home | Shoes | About Us | Contact Us Additionally within the body content we write about various shoe types. We create a link with the anchor text "Shoes" pointing to www.mydomain.co.uk/shoes In this simple example, we have 2 instances of the same link pointing to the same url location.
We have 4 unique links.
In total we have 5 on page links. Question
How many links would Google count as part of the link juice model?
How would the link juice be weighted in terms of percentages?
If changing the anchor text in the body content to say "fashion shoes" have a different impact? Any other advise or best practice would be appreciated. Thanks Mark0 -
Not sure if I should disavow these links or not
I am on the marketing team for CandyGalaxy.com we are an online candy store that specializes in bulk candy for events. Were just about a year and a half old and i'm running into some SEO strategy road blocks lately. When we started the company we used an oversee's seo company. For the first few months results were great then things took a massive dive as google began rolling out updates early and mid last year. After that point we started taking things in house and have been trying to create content and begin content marketing. We launched a blog @ blog.candygalaxy.com and also launched and educational resource at candybuffet101.com - However the question i'm up against now is what to do with those bad old links? Are they actually hurting us? Or just neutral? I'm also trying to decided what to do about the links in my footer? We put those there because those are truly our most popular products and we wanted customers to have easy access, but are those links potentially harmful? I'm questioning these issues because I feel like there is something holding back some of my pages from ranking. For example "blue candy" is a very popular section of our website. We have worked on a lot of content for the blog related to blue candy, made videos, photo shoots ect. We have customer reviews on page and unique category content. According to open site explorer our DA and PA are around the range of most of the sites in the 8-12 serp position. But we have more social activity then all but the top 2-3 spots. However the page almost impossible to find via search. Its not in the first 300 results and surely the page is more relevant then an entry about quilts.. Similar situations like this have led me to think that maybe there is a technical underlying issues that I have not addressed. ? The content is definitely there because if i type in a line from the content directly to google it is the first result. So the site seems indexed properly.. Would love to hear any feedback from similar experiences or ideas. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Jonathan_Murrell0 -
I currently have a client that has multiple domains for multiple brands that share the same IP Address. Will link juice be passed along to the different sites when they link to one another or will it simply be considered internal linking?
I have 7 brands that are owned by the same company, each with their own domain. The brands work together to form products that are then sold to the consumer although there is not a e-commerce aspect to any of the sites. I am looking to create a modified link wheel between the sites, but didn't know if my efforts would pay off due to the same IP Address for all the sites. Any insight on this would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HughesDigital0