Internal Linking: Site-wide VS Content Links
-
I just watched this video in which Matt Cutts talks about the ancient 100 links per page limit.
I often encounter websites which have massive navigation (elaborate main menu, side bar, footer, superfooter...etc) in addition to content area based links.
My question is do you think Google passes votes (PageRank and anchor text) differently from template links such as navigation to the ones in the content area, if so have you done any testing to confirm?
-
He also said: "We invite and strongly encourage readers to test these themselves."
This is what I am after, personal opinion from people who have either tested or experienced the effect first hand.
-
it is a thought that there is an importance if the links apear at the begining of body or at end and if they are in specific tags. How do you specify to crawler that a speciffic link is from a navbar and that link has an bigger value than other content links?
-
Rand has written a blog about this a while ago, how not all links on webpages are created equal, you might find it interesting:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links
-
Thanks for your input!
It seems like your vote goes towards all links being treated equally regardless of their location/function. Interesting... I have suspicion that there is or should be difference. Why?
Consider this, Google notices 150 sitewide links that always appear. Wouldn't it make sense for Google to treat page-specific links differently to sitewide ones as that would in fact improve their ranking system (e.g. 150 standard links not diluting the importance of a page specific link given through content).
Thoughts?
-
Many of this massive navigation are made in flash, javascript, and google can't see them as links, then it conts them as 1 link or as refference to javascript file and nothing else, that's how its done to have massive links but not seen by google or you can set nofollow to non preffered links then google will analyze different your page. And the answer is No, Links are Links everywhere only difference is the tag that link contains, and you can test this with tools like spider view try one on 2 pages and you'll se that there is no difference
Best,
Ion
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
-
Dealing with broken internal links/404s. What's best practice?
I've just started working on a website that has generated lots (100s) of broken internal links. Essentially specific pages have been removed over time and nobody has been keeping an eye on what internal links might have been affected. Most of these are internal links that are embedded in content which hasn't been updated following the page's deletion. What's my best way to approach fixing these broken links? My plan is currently to redirect where appropriate (from a specific service page that doesn't exist to the overall service category maybe?) but there are lots of pages that don't have a similar or equivalent page. I presume I'll need to go through the content removing the links or replacing them where possible. My example is a specific staff member who no longer works there and is linked to from a category page, should i be redirecting from the old staff member and updating the anchor text, or just straight up replacing the whole thing to link to the right person? In most cases, these pages don't rank and I can't think of many that have any external websites linking to them. I'm over thinking all of this? Please help! 🙂
Technical SEO | | Adam_SEO_Learning0 -
Is it detrimental to make a site wide change from .html to .shtml (all pages)?
We have an established website with decent domain authority. My developer inherited the site from another developer and is recommending that we convert all pages from the .html to the .shmtl From an SEO perspective, would this hurt us? Also, if this is not an issue, would updating the canonical help us, or does the canonical setting only deal with the "www." vs. "non-www"? Any insights will be appreciated greatly. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | BVREID0 -
Content relaunch without content duplication
We write great Content for blog and websites (or at least we try), especially blogs. Sometimes few of them may NOT get good responses/reach. It could be the content which is not interesting, or the title, or bad timing or even the language used. My question for the discussion is, what will you do if you find the content worth audience's attention missed it during its original launch. Is that fine to make the text and context better and relaunch it ? For example: 1. Rechristening the blog - Change Title to make it attractive
Technical SEO | | macronimous
2. Add images
3. Check spelling
4. Do necessary rewrite, spell check
5. Change the timeline by adding more recent statistics, references to recent writeups (external and internal blogs for example), change anything that seems outdated Also, change title and set rel=cannoical / 301 permanent URLs. Will the above make the blog new? Any ideas and tips to do? Basically we like to refurbish (:-)) content that didn't succeed in the past and relaunch it to try again. If we do so will there be any issues with Google bots? (I hope redirection would solve this, But still I want to make sure) Thanks,0 -
Why are pages linked with URL parameters showing up as separate pages with duplicate content?
Only one page exists . . . Yet I link to the page with different URL parameters for tracking purposes and for some reason it is showing up as a separate page with duplicate content . . . Help? rpcIZ.png
Technical SEO | | BlueLinkERP0 -
How to add a disclaimer to a site but keep the content accessible to search robots?
Hi, I have a client with a site regulated by the UK FSA (Financial Services Authority). They have to display a disclaimer which visitor must accept before browsing. This is for real, not like the EU cookie compliance debacle 🙂 Currently the site 302 redirects anyone not already cookied (as having accepted) to a disclaimer page/form. Do you have any suggestions or examples of how to require acceptance while maintaining accessibility? I'm not sure just using a jquery lightbox would meet the FSA's requirements, as it wouldn't be shown if JS was not enabled. Thanks, -Jason
Technical SEO | | GroupM_APAC0 -
How to produce no follow links on my joomla site
Hi i have been reading that if you have links going out of your site then this can damage your site, so i have been trying to find out, how i can do no follow links for some of the affliate sites that i have on my site. I have a couple of adverts on my site and i would like to turn these into no follow links while the rest of my internal links on my page are to stay follow links but in joomla i am not sure how to do this. can anyone please give me some advice
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
How do I get rid of irrelevant back links pointing to missing pages on my site
Hi all, My site was hacked about a year ago and as a result I now have a ton of back links from irrelevant sites pointing to pages on my site that no longer exist. The followed back links section on the Competitive domain analysis tool shows about 3 pages worth of these horrible links. I have 2 questions: how bad is this for my site's SEO (which isn't good anyway, Page Rank 0) and how do I get rid of them? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks, Andy WkXz0
Technical SEO | | getzen560 -
Minisites - 301 Redirect or Links to Main site
Not sure whether this is considered black hat or not but I know it is done and I would like to know which is the most effectrive method. If you were to acquire multiple sites in the same niche to your main site (either by buying existing sites or perhaps registering expired domains) which already had strong aged backlinks, is it better to either: a) 301 the new domain to the main site (or a subpage perhaps) b) create 'minisites' on the new domains (trying to mirror the URL structure of the previous incarnation if possible to scoop up and remaining inbound backlink juice, on seperate IPs to the main site as well) and then place several links to the main site & subpages. Would the decay of link juice through 301's mean you lose benefit that way or is it the same as a normal link? Would the 301 method mean any IBL's into URL's other than the homepage be lost? The homepage of the minisite will likely have 4 or 5 internal links so will this dilure the effect of the links to the main site? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | OzDave0