Empty <a>tag (no href or name attribute specificed) potential effect on link juice</a>
-
I have a client that insists on using the ProPhoto WordPress theme. This theme has an interesting habit of putting empty anchor tags in the site nav in order to nest css dropdowns. By empty I mean totally empty. For example:
<a>Navigation Link</a>
Since the anchor does not specify a destiation, do you think it would have any effect on link juice one way or the other? This wouldn't count as an additional link on the page would it?
My inclination and personal practice is not to risk quirky things like this, but I'd like a second opinion before I suggest changes to the client's site.
Thanks!
-
I've been thinking about this one too. And my inital reaction is that it doesn't count. Another thread at Google backs me up, http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=7778313784ba6db5&hl=en
I'd go with that it doesn't, not unless the href is present.
-
I know! I searched far and wide and found no discussion on this at all which was both surprising and frustrating. The lack of information is what led me to post the question because surely someone has encountered this at somepoint, right!?
-
Thanks for the feedback Barry. it is much appreciated. I tend to agree that the href would be a far more probable trigger for determining what is actually a link than the <a>itself.</a>
<a>I just want to make sure I give the best possible advice to my client, but I am starting to lean toward this being something of a non-issue the more I think about it.</a>
<a>To answer your question regarding how the nav works: In this case the :hover css pseudo-class on the empty</a> <a>tag causes the nested sub-menu with actual links to become visible. The empty</a> <a>is nothing but a trigger for the sub-menu.</a>
<a>Cheers!
Dameian</a>
-
I've been having a think about this one and while I'm not sure, I'm going to say I don't think it wouldn't have an effect on link juice passing. As in if there were 4 links and an empty anchor the juice would be divided by 4 and not 5.
Current W3 anchor use - http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html#h-12.1.3 - allows for various parameters in the <a>tag, however I'm willing to bet (not a huge sum of money though) that the href itself triggers the link part of a link (and am I right saying even js links need href="#" or similar to trigger?).</a>
<a>Plus I think older versions of HTML allowed things other than links within anchors (though I may be making that up) so if the engines have grown around those older versions it makes sense they look for something other than the 'a' in the tag to work.
I can't think of a good way to test though, maybe somebody can clarify my thinking or tell me if I'm wrong.
I agree with you though that it's not wise to put quirky elements like this on a page, especially if there's a lot of dropdowns. How do the navigation links work if there's no href?</a>
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
-
Google Sites website https://www.opcfitness.com/ title NOT GOOD FOR SEO
We set up a website https://www.opcfitness.com/home on google sites. but google sites page title not good for SEO. How to fix it?
Technical SEO | | ahislop5740 -
When doing internal linking back to your home/index file what is the best coding course of action?
When doing internal linking back to your home/index page is it best to set the code as linked to "www.thedomain.com" or "www.thedomain.com/" or just "/" - I'm attempting some canonicalization and our programmer is concerned about linking to just the URL as he's saying it's going to be viewed as an external source. We have www redirects in place that come back to just www.thedomain.com and a redirect to send the www.thedomain.com/index.php back to just www.thedomain.com . Any help would be appreciated, thank you!
Technical SEO | | CharlesDaniels0 -
Cumulative effect
<a name="_GoBack"></a>I have a real estate client who creates individual property sites (mini-sites), each with their own URL (123MainStreet.com), each linking to 2 or 3 diverse pages on the main broker site (main site). There are a couple thousand on these pages at any one time, feeding into a large broker site. The SEO effect of these mini-sites is that there are many incoming links to the main site from various URLs, however, the mini-sites have little SEO relevance, given that there are few, if any inbound links to the mini-sites themselves, and the mini-sites only exist for the market life of a property. My question is: Does it make more SEO sense to create a series of pages (externalsite.com/123mainstreet) on a single site that already has good traction and relevance? The inbound links to the main site will have more relevance, but they will all be coming from the same domain (or subdomain). And although the links will all be coming from the same external site, the inbound links will be from a variety of pages on external site to a variety of pages on the main site. Any insight would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | mikescotty0 -
While SEOMoz currently can tell us the number of linking c-blocks, can SEOMoz tell us what the specific c-blocks are?
I know it is important to have a diverse set of c-blocks, but I don't know how it is possible to have a diverse set if I can't find out what the c-blocks are in the first place. Also, is there a standard for domain linking c-blocks? For instance, I'm not sure if a certain amount is considered "average" or "above-average."
Technical SEO | | Todd_Kendrick0 -
2 home page domains causing split in link juice
We have 2 home page domains that are resulting in a split in links. We have mysite.com and mysite.com/index.php. The site is on Joomla and when we try and re-direct the /index.php to just mysite.com is causing an infinite loop. I have done this on other platforms with no problems - is this an issue because of Joomla? How can we complete a 301 re-direct to consolidate our link juice to one domain url?
Technical SEO | | devonkrusich0 -
Can I reduce link count by no following links?
Hi, A large number of my pages contain over 100 links. This is due to a large drop down navigation which is on every page. To reduce my link count could I just no follow these navigation links or would I have to remove the navigation completely?
Technical SEO | | moesian0 -
Effect of rel canonical on links
Has anyone done any experimentation on how Google treats links that are on a page that is being "rel canonical'd" to another page? For eg, example.com/b has a canonical pointing to example.com/a How does Google treat the internal links that are on page example.com/b?
Technical SEO | | Burgo0 -
Onpage linking
On my homepage, I currently link to about 40 internal pages. I'm considering altering the internal linking structure to have 50-100 links on the 2nd level pages. If I was to do this, I'd only need 8 homepage links. Do you think the 8 pages linked from the homepage would go up in the SERPs as the pagerank would be less diluted? I've heard so many mixed views on this. Be interested to see what people here think. Thanks, Pete
Technical SEO | | PeterM220