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
-
How to Delete the slug /category/ from wordpress category pages
Hi all, I would like to ask you what's the better way to eliminate the slug /category/ form the wordpress category pages. I need to delete the slug /category/ to make the url seo frendly. The problem is that my site is an old site with the page indexed by Google for a long time. Thanks for your advice.
Technical SEO | | salvyy0 -
Penguin 2.1 update, ranking dropped.
Hi, My website was hit by Google's new update like never before, first my ranking dropped back in May when Google rolled out with their second Penguin update, back then i was outsourcing my SEO since most of the time i was working on optimizing my local maps. As soon as noticed my traffic dropped i start doing SEO my self, I removed over optimized keywords on website ( title, meta description) then i analyzed my link profile and found that i had a lot of commercial anchor text linking from spammy websites, mostly blog comments. Its been over 4 months since I used Google's disavow tools in hoping that will help me get my raking back, but i still see these spammy links in my profile, 90% of them are nofollow anyways , so i'm not sure if disavow tool helped me at all. With this Penguin 2.1 update my website ended up on page 4-10 for 90% of my keywords http://screencast.com/t/3bcw8LUxpj Im not sure what would be the best way out this, should i buy a new domain and start fresh?Please let me know if you want to take a look on my link profile and give your opinion. Looking forward to your help!
Technical SEO | | mezozcorp0 -
Page has Noindex, nofollow, still ranks #1
Hi there, I have a question about a few pages on our site, whom has a no index, nofollow meta tag but they are still indexed and even rank number one in our market for the term. How is that possible or is it that Google just ignores the tags when they think it´s an error from our side? The url is www.drogisterij.net/kilo_killer and the keyword is kilo killer. We rank number 1 if you search from Google.nl Anyone have seen it before and know why this might be? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | JaapWillemDrogisterij0 -
Do web pages have to be linked to a menu?
I have a situation where people search for terms like, say 1978 one dollar bill. Even though there never was a 1978 one dollar bill. I want to make a page to capture these searches but since there wasn't such a thing as a one dollar bill I don't want it connected to the rest of my content which is reality based. Does that make sense? Anyway, my question is, can I publish pages that aren't linked to my menu structure but that will be searchable or, am I going to have to figure out a way to make these oddball pages accessible through my menu?
Technical SEO | | Banknotes0 -
Ranked on Page 1, now between page 40-50... Please help!
My site, http://goo.gl/h0igI was ranking on page one for many of our biggest keywords. All of a sudden, we completely fell off. I believe I'm down somewhere between page 40-50. I have no warning or error messages in webmaster tools. Can anyone please help me identify what the problem is? This is completely unexpected and I don't know how to fix it... Thanks in advance
Technical SEO | | Prime850 -
What is the criteria for link "Paged from Australia"
When i enter a keyword in google.com.au, and click on a link "Pages from australia" ( in the middle left ), i expect to australian sites only. But there are sites with .com extension. Then what is the meaning of link "Pages from australia". What does it signify ?
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
How to measure number of links out from a page
Following on from earlier Q, what do you all use to count links out from a page. I believe there is a bing tool which does this, though rather than a list of sites a simple number would be ideal?
Technical SEO | | seanmccauley0 -
Home page URL disappears in Google after switching to WordPress
It was a 10 page static HTML page website. 3 year old, PR2. Monday night, copied a WordPress from somewhere to this website's public_html folder and activate it. The home page was "index.html" before switching to WordPress. Now this html file (index.html) has been deleted, so WordPress' Home page can work. All other 9 static html pages are still there in Google index. Just notice it today that the home page URL disappears in Google completely. Why? All other 9 static html pages' URL are still in Google. robots.txt is Allow: / What may have gone wrong to remove the home domain URL from Google index? Thank you for your help!
Technical SEO | | johnzhel0