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number of outbound internal links on a page

by Steviebone
23 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have some pages that contain a lot of links to other internal pages on the same domain. I know many of you have opinions about the optimum/maximum number of outbound external links on a page/site (we can filibuster that topic elsewhere). But is there any reason to limit the number of internal links on a single page (assuming they are all valid and useful links)?
#internal #links #number #outbound #page
  • Profile picture of the author Tim3
    Question:
    What do you call a lot of links? 10, 50, 100?

    Just a page full of internal links and nothing else is an html sitemap, which although useful for visitors is not much use to use in the SERP's, either no-index the page (don't no-follow it)or split the links into smaller groups and put them in some content, i.e make the page useful, then link them together.
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    • Profile picture of the author Jonathan Henson
      If the links actually add value for your visitors and it's the only page on your website with that many links, I don't believe you will have a problem. I have websites with a handful of pages that have 7 to 10 links to the home page, and it does not hurt the SEO of the site.

      On the other hand, in my experience, if it's an outrageous amount of links and it's not a sitemap, it may be a problem and it can end up getting penalized.

      Just my humble opinion; if your site is already ranking well with a lot of visitors on a daily basis, I would not chance it!
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      • Profile picture of the author Steviebone
        Originally Posted by Jonathan Henson View Post

        If the links actually add value for your visitors and it's the only page on your website with that many links, I don't believe you will have a problem. I have websites with a handful of pages that have 7 to 10 links to the home page, and it does not hurt the SEO of the site.

        On the other hand, in my experience, if it's an outrageous amount of links and it's not a sitemap, it may be a problem and it can end up getting penalized.

        Just my humble opinion; if your site is already ranking well with a lot of visitors on a daily basis, I would not chance it!
        Again, I already have many of these pages with way more than 10 links (internal) that rank. None of the links are junk (see above). This makes me think that the number isn't as important as their relevance.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steviebone
      Originally Posted by Tim3 View Post

      Question:
      What do you call a lot of links? 10, 50, 100?

      Just a page full of internal links and nothing else is an html sitemap, which although useful for visitors is not much use to use in the SERP's, either no-index the page (don't no-follow it)or split the links into smaller groups and put them in some content, i.e make the page useful, then link them together.
      Depending on the page, some have more than a hundred. They are not junk links, they all link to other parts of the site exactly relevant to the anchor text keyword.

      For example, a long article may have numerous words linked to a dictionary entry, another article about that word, news items about that word, citations relevant to the word or topic, and so on.

      I have many such pages that rank in google and get google refers to them every day. I'm simply covering all the bases when trying to understand why some of these pages rank and others don't. Since about a third of my referrals land on these pages I'm thinking this isn't the problem.
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      • Profile picture of the author Tim3
        Originally Posted by Steviebone View Post

        Depending on the page, some have more than a hundred. They are not junk links, they all link to other parts of the site exactly relevant to the anchor text keyword.

        For example, a long article may have numerous words linked to a dictionary entry, another article about that word, news items about that word, citations relevant to the word or topic, and so on.

        I have many such pages that rank in google and get google refers to them every day. I'm simply covering all the bases when trying to understand why some of these pages rank and others don't. Since about a third of my referrals land on these pages I'm thinking this isn't the problem.
        ++++++++++++++

        I see where you are coming from, and as long as you are linking through to useful items that's fine.

        A good rule of thumb perhaps is to have no more than 100 links on a page, but there is no penalty for having more, especially if the pages in question are 'high authority' pages.
        (I'm sure Wiki have some pages with a lot more than 100)

        Your main problem with so many links from an SEO viewpoint though, is 100 links will be diluting the link juice passed to 1 x 1/100 or (a tiny amount) of whatever came in to the page to each link, (less some decay factor) so it's a trade-off between usefulness and link power.
        This could be why some pages are doing better than others.

        Another point is that too many links may overwhelm readers, and one tip would be to ensure every link opens in a new tab so they don't lose there place on what they were reading (which is damned annoying)
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        • Profile picture of the author Steviebone
          Originally Posted by Tim3 View Post

          ++++++++++++++

          Your main problem with so many links from an SEO viewpoint though, is 100 links will be diluting the link juice passed to 1 x 1/100 or (a tiny amount) of whatever came in to the page to each link, (less some decay factor) so it's a trade-off between usefulness and link power.
          This could be why some pages are doing better than others.
          I've thought about this and I'm trying to devise a way to cleverly quantify and analyse this to see if this is what's happening...

          Another point is that too many links may overwhelm readers, and one tip would be to ensure every link opens in a new tab so they don't lose there place on what they were reading (which is damned annoying)
          This is a good point and one I often wrestle with. Judicious use of target="_blank" is imperative.
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          • Profile picture of the author Tim3
            Originally Posted by Steviebone View Post

            I've thought about this and I'm trying to devise a way to cleverly quantify and analyse this to see if this is what's happening...


            This is a good point and one I often wrestle with. Judicious use of target="_blank" is imperative.
            You could try taking n % of the links out of the worst performing page or two and see what happens after a couple of months.



            It's not a good idea to no-follow any of your own links, unless there is a VERY good reason to, or any others (except some affiliate links)
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            • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
              This is a good point and one I often wrestle with. Judicious use of rel="nofollow" target="_blank" is imperative.
              Do not use nofollow on internal links. That would be a godawful idea.
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  • Profile picture of the author jackluter
    Banned
    Its not good enough to maintain page with more internal links.By such process your web site will be penalize from google.Maintain less links in your page don't make stuffing.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steviebone
      Originally Posted by jackluter View Post

      Its not good enough to maintain page with more internal links.By such process your web site will be penalize from google.Maintain less links in your page don't make stuffing.
      (See above). This is in no way stuffing. Let's take a dictionary page for example. A word might have 30 synonyms, each linked to it's entry in the dictionary. This is a useful and relevant link. Then there might be related news articles (another 10-20 links) followed by links to relevant law or legal theories.

      Google regularly indexes these pages and serves them up in SERPS. So again I'm not so sure that number is as important as relevance. As long as a link takes someone to another page (be it internal or external) that contains the anchor text in context (and not on a junk domain) I've seen no problems. But then that may just be my experience.
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  • Profile picture of the author SEO Power
    There is no limit to the number of internal or external links you can have on any page of your site as long as you keep it reasonable.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steviebone
      Originally Posted by SEO Power View Post

      There is no limit to the number of internal or external links you can have on any page of your site as long as you keep it reasonable.
      Your comment seems self-conflicting. Define reasonable. That was the point. But then again, as I stated above I think I am convinced that relevance and quality of content linked to is what counts.
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  • Profile picture of the author kindsvater
    Originally Posted by Steviebone View Post

    But is there any reason to limit the number of internal links on a single page (assuming they are all valid and useful links)?
    If the links and pages make sense - I have not seen a problem. Example: I have a page with 1300+ internal links and growing, and Google loves the site. For site maps I believe Google handles up to 50,000 links. Every site is different so it is hard to generalize, but absent a study showing a disadvantage once links hit a certain number the bigger issue is probably the quality of content versus number of links.

    .
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    • Profile picture of the author Steviebone
      Originally Posted by kindsvater View Post

      If the links and pages make sense - I have not seen a problem. Example: I have a page with 1300+ internal links and growing, and Google loves the site. For site maps I believe Google handles up to 50,000 links. Every site is different so it is hard to generalize, but absent a study showing a disadvantage once links hit a certain number the bigger issue is probably the quality of content versus number of links.

      .
      Exactly.

      It amazes me how everyone wants to simplify how G works. But this a billion dollar enterprise which has had the BEST minds developing their product for close to 15 years now, with unlimited funds and probably one of the most robust environments ever created.

      I think its safe to say that what G does is far more complex and advanced than anyone can imagine. It's just common sense to assume that everything they do is aimed at evaluating quality, not quantity.
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  • Profile picture of the author jenniferrini
    Hi,

    Google will index more than 100K of a page, but there’s still a good reason to recommend keeping to under a hundred links or so. If you’re showing well over 100 links per page, you could be overwhelming your users and giving them a bad experience.
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  • Profile picture of the author Cason
    If the human reader would appreciate it it's good in Google's eyes in the long term. Even if it loses a little SEO value upfront you'd gain that back tenfold in user engagement time. Wikipedia has TONS of internal links.
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  • Profile picture of the author npoint
    Don`t interlink your website without the plan. Have your read about SILO structure ?
    Interesting concept, I have tested it on several websites and I can get 100 visitors/day within a month without link building. All you need is silo structure of the website and unique high quality articles posting every day.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steviebone
      Originally Posted by npoint View Post

      Don`t interlink your website without the plan. Have your read about SILO structure ?
      Interesting concept, I have tested it on several websites and I can get 100 visitors/day within a month without link building. All you need is silo structure of the website and unique high quality articles posting every day.
      I'm not sure what you mean by 'the plan'. The site is already uniquely SILOED and the site gets plenty of traffic. There are over a million pages. I am working on a good sitemap building strategy now that should help the bots crawl more efficiently.
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  • Profile picture of the author mattcarter99
    Its not good enough to maintain page with more internal links.By such process your web site will be penalize from google.Maintain less links in your page don't make stuffing.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steviebone
      Originally Posted by mattcarter99 View Post

      Its not good enough to maintain page with more internal links.By such process your web site will be penalize from google.Maintain less links in your page don't make stuffing.
      Doesn't have anything to do with it. I am not in control over the content of these pages (reference materials) only how they are linked. The words are all used in natural context. They are not 'stuffed'.
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  • Profile picture of the author kamaldeepchandel
    Try to incorporate random links in your pages. Sometime use internal links and sometime not. You can use related external links as well which goes to wikipedia and other authority website and it looks to natural to Google. Don't use the same strategy for all pages.
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    • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
      Originally Posted by kamaldeepchandel View Post

      Try to incorporate random links in your pages. Sometime use internal links and sometime not. You can use related external links as well which goes to wikipedia and other authority website and it looks to natural to Google. Don't use the same strategy for all pages.
      Do not put random links on your pages just to put them there. Your links should be thought out with a purpose, both for SEO and for your users.
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    • Profile picture of the author Steviebone
      Originally Posted by kamaldeepchandel View Post

      Try to incorporate random links in your pages. Sometime use internal links and sometime not. You can use related external links as well which goes to wikipedia and other authority website and it looks to natural to Google. Don't use the same strategy for all pages.
      Random links?

      I link for the user, not for SEO. However, that said, I try to avoid anything that could cause problems.

      I'm not sure but that all the simple math formulas with regards to links on a page are all bs. I have some pages that rank well and get served in SERPS regularly that contain a ton of links. I think Google is way smarter than people give them credit for. I think it's unlikely that any One person can deduce what Google has spent billions to develop.

      For example, I'm pretty sure that different algorithms are used for different types of searches. No one simplified "equation" is going to work in all cases.

      In the end, content will always be king. The objective then is to create good content that search bots can understand.
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