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Linking out from the home page

by longrobnc
8 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi everyone,

I was hoping I could get some help with an on-page issue. I own a brick and mortar service company. I had a new site built and the people that were doing SEO placed 17 links near the bottom of the home page that linked out to pages we built for other cities that we service. In 2 other areas, I have physical locations and the pages have links and get some traffic.

I checked my Google analytics and I do not rank well, or get much traffic from any on these pages. 8 of the pages get 2 or less clicks a month, the busiest get 8.

I think these links provide a decent experience to show that we actually service their area, but should I no follow them to keep them from sucking juice off of my main page and place do follow links in text closer to the top of the page in the areas that have Google Places listings?

Thanks for the help.
#home #linking #page
  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Originally Posted by longrobnc View Post

    I think these links provide a decent experience to show that we actually service their area, but should I no follow them to keep them from sucking juice off of my main page and place do follow links in text closer to the top of the page in the areas that have Google Places listings?

    That's not how nofollow works. Google changed it in 2009 to keep people from PR sculpting, which is exactly what you are talking about doing.

    Nofollow doesn't preserve the linkjuice on the page. It just prevents linkjuice from being passed on to the page the link is pointing at. The linkjuice flows out either way. With a nofollow link, it basically just goes into a black hole.


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    • Profile picture of the author longrobnc
      Wow, thanks very much for sharing your knowledge. Do you think that it's detrimental to my home page? Maybe I should leave the city list and wack the links all together.
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by longrobnc View Post

        Wow, thanks very much for sharing your knowledge. Do you think that it's detrimental to my home page? Maybe I should leave the city list and wack the links all together.
        The way I like to do it for a business with multiple locations is to have a single location page that then links to all the locations.

        That way you have a single link in the footer or menu of every page instead of a bunch of links on every page which is weakening your internal link structure.

        This is an example of how I would do it.

        Meeting Locations | The Reeves Law Group
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        • Profile picture of the author expmrb
          Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

          The way I like to do it for a business with multiple locations is to have a single location page that then links to all the locations.

          That way you have a single link in the footer or menu of every page instead of a bunch of links on every page which is weakening your internal link structure.

          This is an example of how I would do it.

          Meeting Locations | The Reeves Law Group
          Creating a page under which gets linked from the homepage. And then putting all the links on that page is actually a wise idea.
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          • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
            Originally Posted by expmrb View Post

            Creating a page under which gets linked from the homepage. And then putting all the links on that page is actually a wise idea.
            I know.

            That's why I suggested it.
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        • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
          Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

          .

          This is an example of how I would do it.

          Meeting Locations | The Reeves Law Group
          Pretty much how I do it as well except rather than drop down links I create a single page that I reference on pages with good juice multiple times (conveys more pagerank to that page) and then link out.

          and of course higher on the page. I've seen good evidence footer links have lower value than links above the fold.
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          • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
            Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

            Pretty much how I do it as well except rather than drop down links I create a single page that I reference on pages with good juice multiple times (conveys more pagerank to that page) and then link out.

            and of course higher on the page. I've seen good evidence footer links have lower value than links above the fold.
            My guess is they did the drop down links to highlight and put more emphasis on two locations that are most important to them, which is not all that bad of an idea. I've never done it that way either though.

            Back when PR was updated regularly, it was much easier to identify that Google clearly put more value on links near the top of the page than links at the bottom of a page. Much harder to test now, but I see little reason why Google would have changed that philosophy.
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  • Profile picture of the author jamie3000
    Could be sneaky and have some js that only renders the links for users and not for Google, but I think that's classed as cloaking then so at your own risk
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