Too many Internal Links: A good thing or bad thing?
-
According to Moz i have over 500 links on some pages, GWT says about 400 with most (90%) having about 210 links.
When I eyeball the site it should have no more than 30 to 40, but my web agency tells me its because the way the CMS works (DotNetNuke) that all pages are linked via the top navigation.
Does this mean that my internal linking strategy is flawed before i even start to consider which pages I want to have more links to?
Our site www.over50choices.co.uk was rebranded & moved to the new CMS in June 2013.
Should i be concerned or is this OK?
Ash
-
Too many internal links is no doubt a bad thing which should be corrected as soon as possible. While there is no magic number you need to adhere to, you will want to keep your internal links to as small a number as possible. The main reason for this is because the more links you have, the lesser pagerank you are going to pass to each link (read more about that here: http://moz.com/blog/how-many-links-is-too-many).
Find out where does all the internal links actually link to, and decide which ones you don't want to pass link juice to and eliminate those links. If all these internal links are a result of your CMS, you might want to consider changing to another CMS.
-
Yep, it looks that way to me... Unless you reduce the amount of links in your CMS, the links you manually put into the content will not have much value. While it is normal that some CMS' might have navigation links in the source code that a user doesn't see, the amount of 400-500 seems way over the top... Maybe you might have to reconsider site architecture in general?
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
-
Have you changed 100's of links on your site? Tell me the why's, the how's and what's!
Hello there. If you've changed 100's of links, then I'd like for you to contribute to this thread. I've created a new URL structure for a website with 500+ posts in an effort to make it more user friendly, and more accessible to crawlers. I was just about to pull the trigger, when I started reading up on the subject and found that I might have a few surprises waiting for me around the corner. The status of my site. 500 posts 10 different categories 50+ tags No Backlinks No recent hits (according to Google Analytics) No rankings. I'm going to keep roughly 75% of the posts, and put them in different (new) categories to strengthen SEO for the topic which I'd like to rank multiple categories for, and also sorted a list with content which I'd like to 410. Created new structure created new categories Compiled list of old URLs, and new URLs New H1, Meta Title & Descriptions New tags It looks simple on paper, but I've got problems executing it. **Question 1. **What do I need to keep in mind when deleting posts, categories, and tags - besides 410, Google URL removal? Question 2. What do I do with all the old posts that I am going to re-direct? Each post has between 10-15 internal links. I've started manually removing each link in old posts before 301'ing them. The reason I'm doing this is control the UX, as well as internal link juice to strengthen main categories. Am I on the right path? On a side note, I've prepared for the 301'ing by changing the H1's, meta data and adding alt text to images. But I can't help but to think that just deleting the old posts, and copying over the content to the new url (with the original dates set) would be a better alternative. Any contribution to this thread would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Web Design | | Dan-Louis1 -
Footer link back to developers domain
I have read a lot about where it is suggested to either not put an attribute link in the footer of a clients site or to no follow it. But I have a little bit different take on the question. How does this work on a large scale? Are these manual penalties, or are they automatic? By large scale, I am talking about big cms programs such as Wordpress, Joomla, and the likes of those. They all have links back to their site in the footer of the default templates. Is this bad? Does it not rally matter on the scale of companies such as this?
Web Design | | LesleyPaone0 -
Internal linking for small site
I have a site with 13 pages, 6 are product pages, 5 are free tips pages (the other 2 are the home page and contact form). Currently I have the navbar at top of site with a "products" dropdown menu for the 6 product pages and a "Tips" dropdown menu for the 5 tip pages. All categories except the contact page are at the bottom as breadcrumbs, the homepage is "home" and the rest are relevant user friendly keyword anchor text. So I have 2 more pages to ad to "Tips" and am wondering whether to have a new 2nd level tips page that links to a 3rd level of 7 different tips pages, or keep it shallow as it is, with only 2 levels from the homepage to the other (now 13) pages, with a potential of 22 pages in the foreseable few years? (and some graphics work to make it user friendly like how Zappo's has categories to the side on each of its drop down navbar menu's and non-link text categories for its bottom of page breadcrumb links) Can those aforementioned pages linking to each other in the footer dilute link equity? (I think that's one of the primary reasons I'm curious). What do you think of this: http://www.dbswebsite.com/blog/2012/08/08/internal-linking-101-5-best-practices/ (I guess I should no follow my contact page), could it be better to have a 2nd level page for "Tips" to get more equity to that page rather than across all 7 tips pages? I have read around about this on here (hence how I found out about Zappo's) and elsewhere and wanted ask to make sure.
Web Design | | Zoolander0 -
I need help with international SEO for two sites?
I'll try to keep this clear... I am working with an company based in Germany, they own company.com/de and company.com/en, and that's how they are currently structuring their domains. They also own companyusa.com that they really want to show up in USA only. They want to keep company.com/en for England/english speaking Europe and company.com/de for their German audience in Germany. They are wanting us to optimize/SEO for companyusa.com, and they want that URL to show up as the top google search in the USA for their "company" keyword. What is showing up now is www.company.com/en 1st in Google because it's been around longer and it has more domain authority. What is the best practice for us optimize companyusa.com so that it is the top dog in the USA while not messing up the other domains? Should we merge? Subfolders all around? Thanks for all the input.
Web Design | | Rocket.Fuel0 -
Does Google follow links inside a <noscript>tag?</noscript>
I'm looking at making an embedable calculator and asking users to embed it to their website. I had the idea of using javascript to include the calculator which would also conatain a text link back to my site in order to gain some back links. If it's possible Google won't see the link (as they may not execute the javascript), is it safe to place the link in the <noscript>tag? If so, Will it be indexed and will Page Rank be passed?</span></p> <p>Thanks in advance for your answers. </p> <p>Anthony</p> <p><span style="color: #5e5e5e;"><br /></span></p></noscript>
Web Design | | BallyhooLtd0 -
Do these links count a duplicate content?
If you do a Google search for the following term it brings up 6 results are these considered duplicate content by Google? Also if so how do I prevent this but still offer other stories to readers of other articles? Google Search Term: site:yakangler.com Okuma helios
Web Design | | mr_w0 -
Best Place for Back Linking
Does anyone have a good list or know where I can find one to show me the best sites to create some organic back links to mine, preferably without paying for them? Thanks to those who help, Craig Fenton IT
Web Design | | craigyboy0 -
Best way of conserving link juice from non important pages
If I have a bunch of non important pages on my website which are of little use in the SE's index - IE contact us pages, pages which are near duplicate and conflict with KW's targetting other pages etc, what is the best way of retaining the link juice that would normally be passed to these pages? Most recent discussion I have read has said that with nofollow you effectively just loose link juice, as opposed to conserving it, so that doesn't seem a great option. If I do "noindex" on these pages, would that conserve the link juice in the site, or again would it be just lost? It seems quite a tricky situation as many pages are legitimate for customer usability, but are not worth having in the SE's index and you better off consolidating link juice - so it seems you are getting penilised for making something "for users". Thanks
Web Design | | James770