Webmaster Tools Internal Links
-
Hi all,
I have around 400 links in the navigation menu (site-wide) and when I use webmaster tools to check for internal links to each page; some have as many as 250K and some as little as 200.
Shouldn't the number of internal links for pages found in the navigation menu be relatively the same? Or is Google registering more internal links for pages linked closer to the top of the code
Thanks!
-
After diving deeper, it looks like it is a matter of breadcrumbs and other types of navigation.
Here is an example of how different pages are linking to /Mens_Bags-600/:
/Electric_Goggles_and_Electric_Sunglasses~65
- links once via the top navigation
/Surfdome_Mens_Bags-600/132
- links twice via the top navigation and the breadcrumb
/Bags-372/
- links three times via the top navigation, left navigation, and in as in-line text as MENS BAGS>
As you can see, depending on the page, the linking structure can vary greatly on your site. I didn't dive extremely deep into your site, so there definitely could be other instances of other types of linking structures on different page layouts. This would definitely explain why some of your pages have MANY in links, while others don't.
I hope this helps; otherwise, like I said, Screaming Frog can pinpoint exactly where your in links are coming from, which can help you figure out the entire linking structure of your site.
Hope this helps.
Mike
-
Hi Mike - Thanks for your response. I can see how breadcrumbs could inflate internal links, but I don't it is the case this time.
Mens_Bags-600/ - 436 products, all with links to that page.
Womens_Bags-226/ - 771 products, all with links to that page.
Both pages can be found in the site-wide navigation.
According to Webmaster Tools, the men's page has 203,062 internal links and women's 8,644.
If the difference were due to the breadcrumb, the women's page should have had more links, right?
Cheers,
Carlos
-
Hi Carlos,
I think part of this has to do with the breadcrumb functionality you have built into your site.
So for instance, /Mens_Wetsuits-598/ has a ton of inlinks. Part of this is because your top navigation is linking to /Men_Wetsuits-598/ on every page on your site, then your breadcrumb functionality is linking to /Mens_Wetsuits-598/ on each of your 252 men's wetsuit products.
If you want a further look at internal linking structure, I would recommend Screaming Frog SEO Spider. It will scan your entire site and can show you all internal in-links and out-links for each page on your site.
I hope this gives you some insight as to what is happening. It is not of course a comprehensive explanation, but you can see how something as small as a breadcrumb can easily inflate the number of internal links.
Mike
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Link Building Strategy?
If I use unique content written from writers & post it to good sites (free blogs, bookmarking, directory, articles sites, etc.) having nice good cache, good PR, different IP's do i still have a chance of get hit by Spam actions of google? Planning to do like just 30-50 a month all with unique content or say 1 unique content then re-written & used not more than 3 times. If not this then What else would you suggest? One more thing to add up, like i have 1000+ pages out of which i have like 80-90 pages that matters to me (important pages) then how do I spin the anchor text between all the pages. Should i spin them between 1000+ pages or use only 80-90 IMP pages. If the content is 300 words let say then how many anchor tags should i have?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
Google Webmaster Tools -> Sitemap suddent "indexed" drop
Hello MOZ, We had an massive SEO drop in June due to unknown reasons and we have been trying to recover since then. I've just noticed this yesterday and I'm worried. See: http://imgur.com/xv2QgCQ Could anyone help by explaining what would cause this sudden drop and what does this drop translates to exactly? What is strange is that our index status is still strong at 310 pages, no drop there: http://imgur.com/a1sRAKo And when I do search on google site:globecar.com everything seems normal see: http://imgur.com/O7vPkqu Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GlobeCar0 -
International SEO
We want to expand to a few new regions internationally. My question is if we register sites in different geographies and upload our exact site to these web addresses (exact duplicates) so our web addresses will then be www.mysite.co.uk (current site) www.mysite.com (new intended site) www.mysite.com.au (new intended site) and add rel=“canonical” linking elements to prevent duplicate content issues.Will our content production on our current site www.mysite.co.uk retain its value within all the other sites. Is this the best way to do it? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | aquaspressovending0 -
Webmaster Tools - Structured Data 100% drop. Many people with same issue, nobody seems to understand what might have caused it.
WMT shows a significant drop in structured data markup on June 7th, steep incline by June 21st. Now the same thing happened on August 9th, with no signs of recovery. Lost 45% of our search traffic. There are many people with the same problem, and nobody seems to know what caused it. Here are a few links to some forums: #1 Google Groups, #2 Google Groups, #3 Google Groups, #4 70% drop on GWT on June 7 Google SEO News and Discussion forum at WebmasterWorld. On our end we see a 100% drop in breadcrumbs and a 100% drop in hcards leading to a 45% search traffic drop. Any ideas why might have happened and how to fix this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PhilippGreitsch0 -
Create a link or redirect?
We have 60 demo movie pages on our site. We no longer link to these movie pages internally, because they are outdated; however, a lot of our partner companies are still linking to these pages. Some of these pages will have 10-15 linking root domains and a page authority of 30+... so pretty decent authority. These pages only include a movie on the pages, no links. I am trying to pass some of the link juice from these pages to other pages on our site. I am wondering if I should: A)Include transcripts on these pages, then link back to our current product page or solution pages? B)Set up redirects from these pages to a product or solution page? C)Set up a redirect to our homepage? Any advice? Thanks, Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mike.Goracke0 -
Do I have any harmful links? If so, what should I do?
URL in question: www.nasserilegal.com/criminal.html I'm using OSE and see some questionable backlinks. At first glance, if you look at the page authority and domain authority, they look great. Once you go to the actual pages, they look spammy. If the links are hurting the rankings for the site, should I try to remove the links manually or just ignore and continue to build good quality links or even build a new site? I noticed for the last couple of weeks, the rankings started to slip. Thanks in Advance, Lucas
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | micasalucasa0 -
What is your onsite linking strategy?
So there are a few different routes to take when you're SEOing your site. My quest is to determine which is the best way to approach this. Let's use a real life example of a product. It's project management software, online collaboration software, employee scheduling tool, business process streamlining tool, client management tool and task/to do manager. It works for virtually any industry. I've created my keyword document and it's HUGE. I've created my wireframe with related keyphrases in buckets. Each one of the example keyphrases listed above have slight variations then a whole list of long tails. I have a few options as I see it: Create site sections within the main site that focus on each (This can make the site look slightly sloppy and categories would have to be masked so it doesn't appear spammy) Create a page in the blog relevant to each keyphrase and link all subsequent blog posts within that keyphrase family directly to that blog post (This seems like my best option) and have cta's or conversion mechanisms on this page Link all keyphrases to the home page (Seems like a terrible idea) Not sure if I answered my own question here, but I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks. What are your thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cmdsonline0 -
How do I get rid of all the 404 errors in google webmaster tools after building a new website under the same domiain
I recently launched my new website under the same domain as the old one. I did all the important 301 redirects but it seems like every url that was in google index is still their but now with a 404 error code. How can I get rid of this problem? For example if you google my company name 'romancing diamonds' half the link under the name are 404 errors. Look at my webmaster tools and you'll see the same thing. Is their anyway to remove all those previous url's from google's indexes and start anew? Shawn
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Romancing0