Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I would think it could depend a lot on the linking page's PR. It would be interesting to know how the ideal number of links scale with the page's PR. My page's PR is a 3.
My general rule is to keep the number of links to what I call the "minimum-optimum" for the job. I like as low a number of links as I can get, while still having user friendy navigation. 20 is a very happy number, but sometimes 80 is really good, because the url needs to feed a lot of other urls.
One of the factors many people skip over is this: anchor text is also an on-page factor, not just a message sent about the target url. Lots of anchor text on a page can begin to garble the semantic relevance of the page itself. I have suspicions about the -950 phenomenon in this regard.
I have two sites under -950 -- and what both have is ten-fifteen related links per page, with fully linked headlines in a sidebar...
20 or so links per page is grounds for a -950?
What about a page ......50 different widgets where each link has "widgets" in its anchor text?
I've got 25 0r so pages like that on my 1,500 page site, and there doesn't seem to be any problem for me. Each of those pages has between 20 and 130 links. and each link includes the appropriate keyword for that page.
That said, I'd note that 25 pages is a pretty small percentage of my total page count.
The links in my case are not keyword loaded deliberately - but yes, they are the headlines of the pages they are linking to. And as the headlines are reasonably optimized... it might all turn out to be keyword-dense...
Thanks for this input. This is something that can be fixed if this is the man trigger...
Anchor text can also have site-wide implications. On one site Google ranked my top keyword as "main", and that's because I had a link on all pages to "Home Page and Main Index". Google presumably treats "home", "index", and "page" as stop-words, but not "main".
A large number of links per page can also reduce the speed of low-level pages getting crawled. The bot has too many choices.
My gut-feeling is that it is best to keep links per page to a minimum for low-PR sites.
Should offtopic/irrelevant not appear in front of "anchor text"?
I'd have thought topical/relevant anchor text would have underlined the semantic relevance...
If the links are keyword loaded, yes, this can be a reason for -950. If the links are NOT keyword loaded or slightly irrelevant, there should be no problem.
I don't think I'd agree, unless you meant 'keyword stuffing' instead of 'keyword loaded'. Or you wanted to say 'loaded with competitive keywords that your site is not relevant to' and/or 'loaded with lots and lots of keywords that are unrelated to each other'.
Irrelevant links are your one way ticket to the -950 area.
...
If you have a main page which has relevance for *all* of the competitive phrases, words it links out with/to, there should be absolutely no problem with including those words in the anchor text of internal links. On the countrary, *not* including them, or using something irrelevant will make your subpages not rank or in special cases go down in flames ( -950 ).
The question here is:
1.: Is the homepage relevant to the anchor text it links with to the subpages?
2.: Will subsections, pages rely on the in-site flow of PR and relevance?
3.: Or do you expect these pages to build up some inbound links by themselves?
4.: If yes... are you sure? For they won't.
If you rely on the homepage getting all the links, which unless it's an informative / news / forum / whatever site, will pretty much be the case, you simply have to use (!) the internal navigation to spread the butter. With short, on spot, relevant, optimized anchor text, and enough links to provide fuel to all of these sections.
Which will leave you:
1.: With a homepage that's gonna be mdeium PR
2.: With subsections, subpages, sub sub subpages that'll have same medium PR
3.: Almost all innermost pages in the normal ( non supplemental ) index
4.: Slower, but very massive buildup of ranking for your keywords
5.: Ranking for every word you target, and a looooong long tail
6.: Very simple link campaign: getting a huge variety of anchor text pointing to the homepage. ***
7.: Which diversity will make it 100% spam/filter/-950 safe.
...
If you don't:
1.: Subpages won't get relevance from links, and thus won't send proper relevance signals ( no rank / -950 )
2.: Subpages won't have enough PR ( Supplemental )
3.: Your homepage will have high PR but won't rank for anything, for...
4.: You can only include as many phrases, words in the homepage title for example.
Build the internal nav like a pyramid, with direct funnels starting from the homepage to the most imporant areas. That golden advice is as timely as ever. Not to mention, that it's probably the most user friendly way of building a website. ( My advice though is that the top of the pyramid should include all level/tier 2 pages at the least... )
As for relevance, it's all about balance.
Don't mix blue widgets with blue cheese.
Get related links, related anchor text in a wide variety, but don't mix themes that aren't to be mixed.
***: On the issue of having all links point to the homepage, don't get me wrong. Getting *quality* links to the subsections is the way to go. If you can do that. ( without making the subsections stand out more than the homepage ). Depending on the nature of the site, number of subsections, pages, this may or may not be possible, right?
But even in that case, or perhaps even more so, you'll need a navigation that's as honest, accessible, relevant, detailed and usable as it can be.
[edited by: Miamacs at 12:42 pm (utc) on Aug. 27, 2007]
[edited by: SEOPTI at 3:36 pm (utc) on Aug. 27, 2007]
If you have a subsection with its main topic(s) emphasized in your own internal nav, but can't find a place for additional anchor text... quality link references from the outside will do the trick without the need to tinker with your own pages.
This doesn't replace the 'relevant, and diverse links to the homepage' or the 'relevant, on-spot, honest navigation' method. This is the bonus stage when all else is in place, and you could still aim for more.
