Too many internal links?

[JorgeV]

Hello,

At one of my site, I am about to open a new section, which is a wikipedia-like style, with original articles, and "lot" of words are linked to their own articles (same site).

By "lot", I mean, that sometimes, there can be 100 links in one page of 3000 words.

If a linked word appears several time, only the first occurrence is linked to its article.

Can it be a problem regarding Google? Is there some kind of link vs text ratio threshold?

Thank you,

[aristotle]

In my opinion you should only link to a few other articles with very closely-related subjects. Also, instead of linking from words within the text, my recommendation is to put all those links at the bottom of the page in a section called "Related Articles".

[lucy24]

Is there some kind of link vs text ratio threshold?

I hope not, because some of my multi-volume ebooks have a comprehensive general index. The record is
:: detour for quick count ::
19216 external links (elsewhere on the site), 789 internal (navigation within the document)

Further detour to raw logs confirms that G has been known to send people directly to the page, so they can’t find the number of links that offensive.

[JorgeV]

Hello,

Thank you for your remarks!

[tangor]

Internal links should be for expanded user value ... lexicon linking only works in dictionaries ... which are generally boredom squared.

Link to value on site. Link to value off site ONLY if you don't mind your user departing and perhaps not coming back...

[mnraza011]

You can interlink many contents but don't overload your page with the link.

[Robert Charlton]

By "lot", I mean, that sometimes, there can be 100 links in one page of 3000 words.

JorgeV... too many internal nav links, whether in-line or from global drop down mega-menus, etc, will dilute both the value and the "meaning" of link-related signals transmitted by your individual links.

The "classic" formulation of PageRank (PR) suggests that on a page with "n" outbound internal links, each link will have one-nth the value of the PR available from the page to distribute to the rest of the site. Some models of PageRank suggest that links from different areas of a page might carry more "weight"... but, to keep discussion simple, let's gloss over this for this particular discussion.

What is important in your question is that on a page with, say, 20 internal nav links linking to other pages, each link will transmit roughly 5 times the value of a link from a page with 100 such internal nav links. Again, I'm going to gloss over what kinds of factors the links will distribute, but the point is that if you're counting links on a page, link value per link must necessarily be lower on a page with more links than on a page with fewer links.

The type of site to a large degree determines its nav structure. Where a site might be receiving its inbound links from other sites also will affect its structure.

Nav structure also inevitably relates to how a visitor might use the site. While lots of links on a page gives the user lots of choices, it might give too many choices, which might confuse both Google and the user

Additionally, a site like Amazon, with a huge number of inbound links, is able to be larger because it can attract more links than most sites, for a multitude of reasons.. That does not mean that a site can simply add a lot of pages and expect to do what Amazon does.

Additonally, your word count on a page doesn't determine how many pages a site can can support. The popularlity and scope of your content (as reflected in your inbound linking) determines that.

It's been so long since I've seen this discussed that I'm thinking that many SEOs and designers might think that it no longer makes a difference. I think that it does. I'm curious what thoughts others have.

[tangor]

Robert: I think the INTENSITY has changed, but agree that is remains a valid part of the ranking process. The "black box" has remained opaque, and the number of factors has increased, but I can't believe that any factor, once created, would be discarded. The weight will change over time, but it will never go away.

[JorgeV]

Hello,

Thank you for your additional remarks.

[JS_Harris]

Look at it a bit differently.

If your article mentions a person or item and you do not describe said person or item on that page then it might be helpful to link to a page that does. Wikipedia uses this approach profusely and no there is not real max limit to number of internal links.

[2clean]

I had a client with the only links in the menu of their pages to the other sections. I linked from the content in logical places to other relevant pages (because if I link them to irrelevant pages the outcome will obviously be that they leave the website and then the client has lots that visitor) and they are now ranking much better and getting leads. As for the ranking of the website, frankly I no longer need to look at it because focusing on that metric is basically now a complete brown widget.