Keeping <100 Links per Page

[teacake23]

I have a number of webpages detailing 5 core services across different UK areas. Some of my webpages list more than 20 unique areas and include a link to each of the 5 services for each area, therefore generating more than 100 links on the page (plus generic site nav links on top of these!).

What would be the best approach to help ensure these pages contain less than 100 links?

I don't think NoFollow tags would work because I guess a bot still considers these as links on the page. Would a javascript link also be considered as part of the overall webpage link count if I used links like:
<a href="javascript:redirectTo('http://www.URL.com');">

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as there is a strong usability case to include all the links on the page but I need all links to be crawled.

[beu]

There is not a penalty for having more than 100 links on a page but the more links the better the chance some will not get crawled. Just make normal links!

[teacake23]

Indeed, but I wondered if there was a way to ensure the bots crawl all of the most important links.
Yahoo have the 'robots-nocontent' tag which will indicate to their crawler what parts of a page are unrelated to the main content and are only useful for visitors, but is there an equivalent for Google?

[beu]

Originally Posted by teacake23

Indeed, but I wondered if there was a way to ensure the bots crawl all of the most important links.
Yahoo have the 'robots-nocontent' tag which will indicate to their crawler what parts of a page are unrelated to the main content and are only useful for visitors, but is there an equivalent for Google?

If this is your goal, implement an xml sitemap. After you have an xml sitemap register it's URL with the search engines.

[SkyLite]

Originally Posted by teacake23

I have a number of webpages detailing 5 core services across different UK areas. Some of my webpages list more than 20 unique areas and include a link to each of the 5 services for each area, therefore generating more than 100 links on the page (plus generic site nav links on top of these!).

What would be the best approach to help ensure these pages contain less than 100 links?

I don't think NoFollow tags would work because I guess a bot still considers these as links on the page. Would a javascript link also be considered as part of the overall webpage link count if I used links like:
<a href="javascript:redirectTo('http://www.URL.com');">

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as there is a strong usability case to include all the links on the page but I need all links to be crawled.

My data show 100 or more links on a page is better.
But what's really going to bake your noodle Neo, is that
between 11 to 20 links inside the Head tag is a positive
ranking factor.

[beu]

Originally Posted by SkyLite

My data show 100 or more links on a page is better.
But what's really going to bake your noodle Neo, is that
between 11 to 20 links inside the Head tag is a positive
ranking factor.

"Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may want to break the site map into separate pages."
http://www.google.com/support/webmas...y?answer=35769

Don't put links in the head tag!

Get a Google Webmaster Tools account and submit a "Google Sitemap" in xml.
https://www.google.com/webmasters/to.../en/about.html

[SkyLite]

Originally Posted by beu

[b][i]
Don't put links in the head tag!

Get a Google Webmaster Tools account and submit a "Google Sitemap" in xml.
https://www.google.com/webmasters/to.../en/about.html

I'll cover this for you. Do 280,000 searches on Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Save the top 10 results, the whole page, in a database, and store them 1-10.

NOW....just query your data base and find out how the pages stack up.

Two of the queries on my list of 1,200 queries are:

A
Q. Does having 0 links for the head affect ranking?
Yes; It decreases ranking
Data: (-60) 159 160 161 174 174 164 177 167

B
Q. Does having 1-10 links for the head affect ranking?
Yes; It increases ranking
Data: (+28) 221 221 226 206 209 217 209 214

The sites are in order, one to ten.
(A) Shows a very strong negative correlation of [-60]
(B) Shows a mild positive correlation of [+28]

So my advice was wrong. 1 - 10 links in the head is important.
11-20 was not the best answer. The 11-20 correlation was
higher, but there were not enough sites found in that range
for the results to be considered reliable.
(B) Shows 221(x10) sites in the #1 position but the next query
for the 11-20 range only found 5(x10) sites....so the results
are too few to trust.

[beu]

Originally Posted by SkyLite

I'll cover this for you. Do 280,000 searches on Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Save the top 10 results, the whole page, in a database, and store them 1-10.

NOW....just query your data base and find out how the pages stack up.

Two of the queries on my list of 1,200 queries are:

A
Q. Does having 0 links for the head affect ranking?
Yes; It decreases ranking
Data: (-60) 159 160 161 174 174 164 177 167

B
Q. Does having 1-10 links for the head affect ranking?
Yes; It increases ranking
Data: (+28) 221 221 226 206 209 217 209 214

The sites are in order, one to ten.
(A) Shows a very strong negative correlation of [-60]
(B) Shows a mild positive correlation of [+28]

So my advice was wrong. 1 - 10 links in the head is important.
11-20 was not the best answer. The 11-20 correlation was
higher, but there were not enough sites found in that range
for the results to be considered reliable.
(B) Shows 221(x10) sites in the #1 position but the next query
for the 11-20 range only found 5(x10) sites....so the results
are too few to trust.

When you say links, do you mean meta data?
http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/global.html#h-7.4

As you can see "links" don't go in the head element!

[SkyLite]

Originally Posted by beu

When you say links, do you mean meta data?
http://www dot w3.org/TR/html4/struct/global.html#h-7.4
As you can see "links" don't go in the head element!

No, I was referring to links.

Looking at your link, I'm surprised to see it allows just about anything but the kitchen sink inside the head tag. And the Kitchen Sink is not even mentioned as an exclusion. You could drop a dictionary in there if you wanted to.

If I say something "Crazy" then go check it out for yourself. Never take what people say in forums to be anything of any value until you check it out first. And even then, each ranking factor is JUST a factor....meaning 10's of 1000's of sites can ignore any factors they choose to and make up for it somewhere else and still rank well.

I said "high ranking site have links in their heads."
Most free advice comes from people with rocks in their heads...but I digress....

Lets pick.....Wiki...and see. Go to "Wiki" and then "View Page Source".

Look between <head> and </head> and you'll find links of different kinds.

The data says that if YOU have links like those, your page will benefit.
So create 1 - 10 links like those ....but for your own site.

[beu]

Originally Posted by SkyLite

No, I was referring to links.

Looking at your link, I'm surprised to see it allows just about anything but the kitchen sink inside the head tag. And the Kitchen Sink is not even mentioned as an exclusion. You could drop a dictionary in there if you wanted to.

If I say something "Crazy" then go check it out for yourself. Never take what people say in forums to be anything of any value until you check it out first. And even then, each ranking factor is JUST a factor....meaning 10's of 1000's of sites can ignore any factors they choose to and make up for it somewhere else and still rank well.

I said "high ranking site have links in their heads."
Most free advice comes from people with rocks in their heads...but I digress....

Lets pick.....Wiki...and see. Go to "Wiki" and then "View Page Source".

Look between <head> and </head> and you'll find links of different kinds.

The data says that if YOU have links like those, your page will benefit.
So create 1 - 10 links like those ....but for your own site.

No, you are reffering to meta data:
http://dublincore.org/documents/dcq-html/

"links" are a "slang" term for hyperlinks. Hyperlinks don't go in the head element.

[SkyLite]

Originally Posted by beu

"links" are a "slang" term for hyperlinks. Hyperlinks don't go in the head element.

My language usage stems from the practical aspects of counting links, either links in the head...or links in the body. I am not able to distinguish what metadata is so I can't ask the computer to figure it out. None of the meta data I am referring to mentions "Meta" but it does all mention "Link" and "href" . Is "href" slang for "Hyperlink Referance"? If so, the culprit is HTML 4.0 because it is using the slang term "href" for "hypertext reference" in the head.

I didn't say it. It's their fault, not mine.


<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/mrw_style.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/talkbox.css" >
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/rndcrn.css" >
<link rel='archives' title='How are Online Applications Processed?' href='http://www(.)militaryresumewriters.com/resumes101/online_applications_processed.php' >
<link rel='archives' title='How to Apply for Federal Jobs ' href='http://www(.)militaryresumewriters.com/resumes101/how_apply_federal_jobs.php' >

[mcanerin]

Skylite,

You have discovered is that there is a positive correlation between sites using CSS and high ranking sites. Which is interesting in and of itself, but doesn't have anything to do with hypertext links on a page.

Indeed, even the relationship between CSS and rankings is not necessarily direct. Most well-ranking sites are well coded and care about doing a good job use CSS, and most SEO's recommend the use of CSS to avoid certain issues. The correlation could be just that sites that listen to SEOs rank better. Or sites that care about their design standards, or many other things.

I certainly would NOT take this to mean that by putting some links in the header area that a modern search engine would suddenly think the site is a better match for searches made for it's visitors. Quite the opposite, actually.

All,

As for dealing with a lot of links on a page, here are some guidlines, thoughts and ideas:

1. Links at the top of the page (in code) have more effect than those at the bottom. In the case of lots of links, you can use this to make sure that your less useful, more generic ones (like the privacy policy, etc) are at the bottom.

2. If possible, try to break them up into sub-pages. I nest sitemaps sometimes to accomplish this.

3. As a general rule of thumb, the more links TO a page, the more links on the page that will be counted. In short, if you have pages with a lot of links on them, try to make sure they are closer to the top of the heirarchy of your site and have lots of link love. A low PR page with tons of links in it is almost useless. I've seen pages with well over 100 links showing up in a backlink check, but only when they have high PR.

4. You can "get rid" of some links with javascript, nofollow, Flash, etc to give the others more breathing room.

Ian

[SkyLite]

Originally Posted by mcanerin

Skylite,

You have discovered is that there is a positive correlation between sites using CSS and high ranking sites. Which is interesting in and of itself, but doesn't have anything to do with hypertext links on a page.
Ian

My data shows 100 or more links on a page is better.
But what's really going to bake your noodle Neo, is that
between 11 to 20 links inside the Head tag is a positive
ranking factor. ( Corrected to 1 - 10 of those "thingies" that use work "link" and not including Meta tags or CSS style sheets)

They look like this:
<link rel='archives' title='How to Apply for Federal Jobs ' href='http://www(.)militaryresumewriters.com/resumes101/how_apply_federal_jobs.php' >
...and they link to other "stuff" and they are in the head and if you put as many as 20 of them in your head, it will push your rankings up a notch.

On-page factors are 40% of ranking factors total. No single ranking factor is make or break, as you say.

[beu]

Some meta data is "understood" and doesn't need "meta tags". LINK element meta data defines a relationship between documents. Any number of Link elements can be placed in the HEAD of a document. It's important to note that the Link element lacks important keyword anchor text found in hyperlinks. A number of browsers don't support the Link element meaning, this element is not available to the user in most cases.

The Link element is often used to "auto-discover" RSS feeds. Because of auto-discovery, search engines are able to find URLs which are otherwise blocked by architectural barriers.

HREF hyperlink URLs with anchor text are a more valuable SEO asset than URLs contained in Link elements.

Google suggests less than 100 hyperlinks per page but, does not to my knowledge make any suggestions on the use of Link elements or other URLs in the head of a document.

So, what you see is the result of search engines finding a URL and not it's location.

[SkyLite]

Originally Posted by beu

Google suggests less than 100 hyperlinks per page but, does not to my knowledge make any suggestions on the use of Link elements or other URLs in the head of a document.

So, what you see is the result of search engines finding a URL and not it's location.

Stumped me on that "url not location " comment. Maybe your not looking at what I'm seeing? I dunno.

If Google has been "suggesting" less than 100 links per page...then they are blowing smoke rings in the peeps ears. Or more likely, the insider advice came from your average Google employee who is just one normal person working in a VERY large company.

Q. Does having more than 100 links for the page affect ranking?
A. Yes; It increases ranking.
Data: (+53) 81 88 96 81 81 76 75 80 (x100 sites)
That's a +53 correlation with the data leaning toward #1 ranking on the left.

[SkyLite]

Originally Posted by mcanerin

I certainly would NOT take this to mean that by putting some links in the header area that a modern search engine would suddenly think the site is a better match for searches made for it's visitors.

It should be taken as I said it. Based on 300,000 searches with results 1 - 10 stored in a database...... A query can be made asking:

Q. Does having 0 links for the head affect ranking?
Yes; It decreases ranking
Data: (-60) 159 160 161 174 174 164 177 167

Q. Does having 1-10 links for the head affect ranking?
Yes; It increases ranking
Data: (+28) 221 221 226 206 209 217 209 214

So there it is... "0" links in the head is bader with a correlation of (-60) , and 1 - 10 is gooder.

And I think the query is just counting the word "link".

[beu]

Stumped me on that "url not location " comment. Maybe your not looking at what I'm seeing? I dunno.

If Google has been "suggesting" less than 100 links per page...then they are blowing smoke rings in the peeps ears. Or more likely, the insider advice came from your average Google employee who is just one normal person working in a VERY large company.

Perhaps you should see where my "insider advice" comes from, it's called "Google Webmaster Guidelines" and it is available to everyone.
http://www.google.com/support/webmas...y?answer=35769

Please feel to check it out sometime. When you do, note the last point under "Design and content guidelines".
http://www.google.com/support/webmas...r=35769#design

"Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100)."

[SkyLite]

Originally Posted by beu

Perhaps you should see where my "insider advice" comes from, it's called "Google Webmaster Guidelines" and it is available to everyone. http://www.google.com/support/webmas...y?answer=35769
Please feel to check it out sometime. When you do, note the last point under "Design and content guidelines".http://www.google.com/support/webmas...r=35769#design
"Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100)."

Thanks. I wasn't aware the poor advice was flowing from such a high level.
Looking over the mis-information I didn't find anything else out of line with
what they say, compared to what they do.

When what Google says, matches what Google does, then what they said is valid and not before. At THIS time....it's not valid.

Q. Does having more than 100 links for the page affect ranking?
A. Yes; It increases ranking.
Data: (+53) 81 88 96 81 81 76 75 80 (x100 sites)
That's a +53 correlation with the data leaning toward #1 ranking on the left.

Out of 1200 database queries only about 25 or so show a clear correlation.
Looking at the data....and assuming it was perfect.....it looks like pages with more than 100 links land at #3 position most of the time.

That's 9600 pages land at #2 & #3 and
8000 pages land at #10.

If Google calls me on the phone, I'll tell them 100 or more links ranks better.

I can hear Eric Ward smiling as he tosses out the ace of clubs, and Matt Cutts SLAMS down his hand of cards.

[teacake23]

Thanks everyone for the posts, I really appreciate it.
Skylite, I think one of the points Ian made could be an important factor to consider whilst reviewing your link/rank data:

Originally Posted by mcanerin

3. As a general rule of thumb, the more links TO a page, the more links on the page that will be counted.... I've seen pages with well over 100 links showing up in a backlink check, but only when they have high PR.

Big thanks to Mcanerin for the reassurance about using javascript links:

Originally Posted by mcanerin

4. You can "get rid" of some links with javascript, nofollow, Flash, etc to give the others more breathing room.

Does this mean that the bots will exclude these as links (when considering overall volume of on-page links) because they are not crawlable?

[beu]

Does this mean that the bots will exclude these as links (when considering overall volume of on-page links) because they are not crawlable?

Yes, those not crawlable links being javascript, nofollow, Flash.