Self Referencing Links - Good or Bad?
-
As an agency we get quite a few of our clients come to us saying "Ooo, this company just contacted me saying they've run an SEO report on my site and we need to improve on these following things"
We had one come through the other day that had reported on something we had not seen in any others before.
They called them self-referencing links and marked it as a point of action should be taken. They had stated that 100% of the pages on our clients website had self-referencing links.
The definition of self-referencing is when there is a link on a page that is linking to the page you are currently on. So for example you're on the home page and there is a link in the nav bar at the top that says "Home" with a link to the home page, the page you are already currently on.
Is it bad practice? And if so can we do anything about it as it would seem strange from a UI point of view not to have a consistent navigation. I have not heard anything about this before but I wanted to get confirmation before going back to our client and explaining.
Thanks Mozzers!
-
Great, as we thought!
Thanks for the explanation, makes even more sense now!
-
Well said. And on that note, I wouldn't trust the SEO advice of an email spammer
-
"it would seem strange from a UI point of view not to have a consistent navigation."
You hit the nail on the head, imagine is a website like Amazon removed the link on their logo to the homepage from the homepage, some people click this on the homepage just because they're confused and if they don't see a page refresh they may be upset. It's also a LOT more work to implement this.
I would argue a consistent navigation is good, as Google likes to follow a good structure, it's just causing you potential problems, what if you're using a CMS and you're on the blog, then you go to a blog article, do you remove the blog menu link as you're within the blog? There's just no real reason I can personally see for it.
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
-
Disavow links old links
We have built a lot of sites and there a few sites we no longer manage or want any association with. When I have looked at webmasters I can see 20 to 200+ odd links back to our site. The page however at source has no reference to our website. I have searched the code but there isn't anything. Is it safe to disavow these or just leave them?
Technical SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Toxic Link Removal
Greetings Moz Community: Recently I received an site audit from a MOZ certified SEO firm. The audit concluded that technically the site did not have major problems (unique content, good architecture). But the audit identified a high number of toxic links. Out of 1,300 links approximately 40% were classified as suspicious, 55% as toxic and 5% as healthy. After identifying the specific toxic links, the SEO firm wants to make a Google disavow request, then manually request that the links be removed, and then make final disavow request of Google for the removal of remaining bad links. They believe that they can get about 60% of the bad links removed. Only after the removal process is complete do they think it would be appropriate to start building new links. Is there a risk that this strategy will result in a drop of traffic with so many links removed (even if they are bad)? For me (and I am a novice) it would seem more prudent to build links at the same time that toxic links are being removed. According to the SEO firm, the value of the new links in the eyes of Google would be reduced if there were many toxic links to the site; that this approach would be a waste of resources. While I want to move forward efficiently I absolutely want to avoid a risk of a drop of traffic. I might add that I have not received any messages from Google regarding bad links. But my firm did engage in link building in several instances and our traffic did drop after the Penguin update of April 2012. Also, is there value in having a professional SEO firm remove the links and build new ones? Or is this something I can do on my own? I like the idea of having a pro take care of this, but the costs (Audit, coding, design, content strategy, local SEO, link removal, link building, copywriting) are really adding up. Any thoughts??? THANKS,
Technical SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Link juice and max number of links clarification
I understand roughly that "Link Juice" is passed by dividing PR by the number of links on a page. I also understand the juice available is reduced by some portion on each iteration. 50 PR page 10 links on page 5 * .9 = 4.5 PR goes to each link. Correct? If so and knowing Google stops counting links somewhere around 100, how would it impact the flow to have over 100 links? IE 50 PR page 150 links on the page .33 *.9 = .29PR to each link BUT only for 100 of them. After that, the juice is just lost? Also, I assume Google, to the best of its ability, organizes the links in order of importance such that content links are counted before footer links etc.
Technical SEO | | sprynewmedia0 -
Paid directory links--good or bad thing to do for Prof. Services sites?
Yes, I am pretty darn new to SEO and have heard that Google doesn't like Paid directory links. I have looked at some of my competition and they must have paid to get in certain directories as I don't see any backlinks posted on their home pages (usually a badge or icon must be placed on the homepage to avoid a fee.)
Technical SEO | | Stratocaster0 -
Client with Very Very Bad Onsite SEO
So one of my clients has a really really bad website from the technical perspective. I am talking over 75k in violations and warnings. Granted, the tagging is done well but any other SEO violation you can think of is occurring. In any case, they are building a new website, and I am on a retainer for a couple hours a week to do some link building. I am feeling like I am not getting anywhere. What is your advice? Should I keep on keeping on or advice the client to put SEO on hold until the technical issues are resolved. I feel like all of this link building isn't having the value that it could have with a site like this.
Technical SEO | | runnerkik0 -
Nofollow link passing link juice
Can a link which is nofollwed pass link juice ? Please see the discussion at - http://www.seomoz.org/q/if-multiple-links-on-a-page-point-to-the-same-url-and-one-of-them-is-no-followed-does-that-impact-the-one-that-isn-t
Technical SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Linking to related business?
If your working with a local business, is it a good idea to reach out to similar businesses in other states and ask for a link? Example: I own a paint shop in Minnesota, and I reach out to a paint shop in California to see if we want to link to each others site to help our SEO. Because we aren’t in competition with each other wouldn’t this help us both?
Technical SEO | | marker-3115280 -
Why would a link shown on OSE appear differently than the page containing the link?
I recently traded links with a site that I will call www.example.com When I used open site explorer to check the link it came back with a different page authority as www.example.com/index.htm yet the link does appear on the www.example.com page. Why would this be?
Technical SEO | | casper4340