Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Do I have to many internal links which is diluting link juice to less important pages
-
Hello Mozzers,
I was looking at my homepage and subsequent category landing pages on my on my eCommerce site and wondered whether I have to many internal links which could in effect be diluting link juice to much of the pages I need it to flow.
-
My homepage has 266 links of which 114 (43%) are duplicate links which seems a bit to much to me. One of my major competitors who is a national company has just launched a new site design and they are only showing popular categories on their home page although all categories are accessible from the menu navigation. They only have 123 links on their home page. I am wondering whether If I was to not show every category on my homepage as some of them we don't really have any sales from and only concerntrate on popular ones there like my competitors , then the link juice flowing downwards in the site would be concerntated as I would have less links for them to flow ?... Is that basically how it works ?
-
Is there any negatives with regards to duplicate links on either home or category landing page. We are showing both the categories as visual boxes to select and they are also as selectable links on the left of a page ? Just wondered how duplicate links would be treated?
Any thoughts greatly appreciated
thanks
Pete
-
-
Hello Dirk & Mike
Many thanks for you advice and feedback.
Alot of my categories and landing pages are all within 2 clicks from home so that's a relief that google isn't counting the number of / in the url.
Most of my users don't come through home page as my brand is not well known etc , I rank for my category landing pages so these are pages I really need to push hence my thoughts on reducing the number of categories on home page to only popular categories as a few of them we have never made any sales from so to push more link juice to the ones we do should help those rankings there otherwise I'm wasting potential link juice to products etc we never sell..
Many thanks for taking the time to explain.
Pete
-
Hi Pete,
Personally I am not a big believer in trying to funnel link juice across the site - but theoretically yes, if you reduce the number of (unique) links on the home, the more link juice is passed to the categories below.
On the other side, the fewer links you have on the homepage, the more you are pushing content deeper in your site (number of clicks from the homepage to reach pages).
The other point - you can structure your URL anyway you want (best is to keep them quite simple so that they are easy to remember and not too long). For the depth - Google is looking at the number of clicks to reach this page (starting from home) - they are not counting the number of "/" in your url.
Hope this helps,
Dirk
Edit: you might want to check these resources: http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2316757/matt-cutts-on-linking-guidelines-how-many-links-on-a-page - and this one https://moz.com/blog/how-many-links-is-too-many
-
Pete,
You shouldn't have more than 200 links on one page. I don't see why you would need so many duplicate links, a few yes, but 50%?
2c
Thanks,
- Mike Bean
-
Hi Dirk,
Many thanks for your assistance and advice. The homepage does look quite busy with alot going on, thats why I thought it would be better to have the homepaqe more about branding etc and less about the trying to get every category etc on there etc on there as we are small business, so building trust /brand etc is vital as we can't compete with the majors who seem to have an instant advantage with higher da etc .. Most users come in on a category landing page as oppose to home to so I think that would improve user experience and make the whole thing alot less cluttered. Then I would have the room to improve other aspects such as my diy news etc.
Am I correct in assuming though by having less links , If I was to tone the homepage down , would improve the concentration of link juice to the child pages.
Also another thing I've noticed is that my level 2 categories do not sit directly underneath my level 1 categories from a URL point of view. We were wondering if this would confuse google even though we have everything in mini sitemaps etc.
Many Thanks
Pete
-
Hi Pete,
No need to worry about the duplicate links - to quote Matt Cutts (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ybpXU0ckKQ) - nothing to worry about (as long as it's not 5000 internal links with over optimised anchor)
266 links on the home is a lot - but not an amount of links that is surprisingly high for an average e-commerce site (especially with the duplicates). Regarding the number of links I would rather think about usability than SEO. If having this much links on the page is making it easier for your visitors to go through your site - keep them. If this number of links is making them confused - try to reorganise & regroup the links. A small user test with a few people not too familiar with your site can learn you a lot about the usability factor and how many people are actually using the links to navigate (vs just using the internal search function)
Hope this helps,
Dirk
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
-
Is a page with links to all posts okay?
Hi folks. Instead of an archive page template in my theme (I have my reasons), I am thinking of simply typing the post title as and when I publish a post, and linking to the post from there. Any SEO issues that you can think of? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Mar 31, 2021, 7:27 AM | Nobody16165422281340 -
Should I apply Canonical Links from my Landing Pages to Core Website Pages?
I am working on an SEO project for the website: https://wave.com.au/ There are some core website pages, which we want to target for organic traffic, like this one: https://wave.com.au/doctors/medical-specialties/anaesthetist-jobs/ Then we have basically have another version that is set up as a landing page and used for CPC campaigns. https://wave.com.au/anaesthetists/ Essentially, my question is should I apply canonical links from the landing page versions to the core website pages (especially if I know they are only utilising them for CPC campaigns) so as to push link equity/juice across? Here is the GA data from January 1 - April 30, 2019 (Behavior > Site Content > All Pages😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 14, 2019, 7:32 PM | Wavelength_International0 -
Breadcrumbs and internal links
Hello, I use to move up my site structure with links in content. I have now installed breadcrumbs, is it is useful to still keep the links in content or isn't there a need to duplicate those links ? and are the breadcrumbs links enough. Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Aug 30, 2017, 11:55 AM | seoanalytics1 -
If I nofollow outbound external links to minimize link juice loss > is it a good/bad thing?
OK, imagine you have a blog, and you want to make each blog post authoritative so you link out to authority relevant websites for reference. In this case it is two external links per blog post, one to an authority website for reference and one to flickr for photo credit. And one internal link to another part of the website like the buy-now page or a related internal blog post. Now tell me if this is a good or bad idea. What if you nofollow the external links and leave the internal link untouched so all internal links are dofollow. The thinking is this minimizes loss of link juice from external links and keeps it flowing through internal links to pages within the website. Would it be a good idea to lay off the nofollow tag and leave all as do follow? or would this be a good way to link out to authority sites but keep the link juice internal? Your thoughts are welcome. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jul 19, 2016, 3:53 PM | Rich_Coffman0 -
Is their value in linking to PPC landing pages and using rel="canonical"
I have ppc landing pages that are similar to my seo page. The pages are shorter with less text with a focus on converting visitors further along in the purchase cycle. My questions are: 1. Is there a benefit for having the orphan ppc pages indexed or should I no index them? 2. If indexing does provide benefits, should I create links from my site to the ppc pages or should I just submit them in a sitemap? 3. If indexed, should I use rel="canonical" and point the ppc versions to the appropriate organic page? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Apr 1, 2015, 12:57 AM | BrandExpSteve0 -
Redirecting one site to another for link juice
I have two sites with same theme - buying cars. I am going remove one of the sites from being crawled permenantly (ie junkthecars.com) and point domian via 301, to another similar theme site (sellthecars.com). The purpose is to simply pass the SEO link juice from one site to the other as we retire junkthecars.com.... Is a forwarding of the domain OK and the best way for the search engines to increase the rank of sellthecars.com (we hate to wast the link work done on Junkthecars.com)? What dangers should I look for that could hurt sellthecars.com if we do the redirect at a simple TLD?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Jun 6, 2013, 10:25 PM | bestone0 -
Do 404 Pages from Broken Links Still Pass Link Equity?
Hi everyone, I've searched the Q&A section, and also Google, for about the past hour and couldn't find a clear answer on this. When inbound links point to a page that no longer exists, thus producing a 404 Error Page, is link equity/domain authority lost? We are migrating a large eCommerce website and have hundreds of pages with little to no traffic that have legacy 301 redirects pointing to their URLs. I'm trying to decide how necessary it is to keep these redirects. I'm not concerned about the page authority of the pages with little traffic...I'm concerned about overall domain authority of the site since that certainly plays a role in how the site ranks overall in Google (especially pages with no links pointing to them...perfect example is Amazon...thousands of pages with no external links that rank #1 in Google for their product name). Anyone have a clear answer? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | May 7, 2013, 8:15 PM | M_D_Golden_Peak0 -
100 + links on a scrolling page
Can you add more than 100 links on your webpage If you have a webpage that adds more content from a database as a visitor scrolls down the page. If you look at the page source the 100 + links do not show up, only the first 20 links. As you scroll down it adds more content and links to the bottom of the page so its a continuos flowing page if you keep scrolling down. Just wanted to know how the 100 links maximum fits into this scenario ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | Mar 20, 2013, 5:18 AM | jlane90