Has anyone ever attempted (successfully or not) to consciously reduce their amount of homepage links in order to improve their search engine rankings?
-
I work for a retail company that is highly segmented. We have a lot of categories to cover the types of merchandise we offer on our home page, and way more than the recommended # of links on our homepage because of it. Has anyone ever attempted (successfully or not) to consciously reduce their amount of links (and categories) in order to improve their search engine rankings? If so, can you walk through your process and your advice on whether or not reducing links on a site like mine is a good idea?
-
Hey Wayne, thank you for the timely and detailed answer to my question! We have pondered the actual effects of reducing homepage links and this clears a lot up! Also, thanks for the link, it has a ton of relevant information. I will bring this up at my next team meeting!
-
Found it - http://seogadget.co.uk/choosing-your-home-page-links-homepage-seo/ (hope its OK dropping a link in a comment).
-
I don't know how helpful this will be but we have recently been quite successful with a similar approach for one of our clients.
When their site was launched it was enjoying good rankings for their core categories and great conversions. Over time a ton of content was added all over the place and the homepage looked like a Xmas tree with the links, baubles and buttons on it. After about a year they started to slip and revenue on the core categories was dropping like a lead canary.
We got called in, asked them to be brutally honest about the importance of each category and created a hierarchy for them to sign off on. Once we had that we removed the non-critical links from both the homepage and the main nav, relegating them to sub-menus. We also cleaned up a whole bunch of other stuff that really should have been caught earlier.
The end result was an average 35% increase in conversions on the core categories within a month. Interestingly the "secondary" categories I thought we were possible sacrificing didn't suffer at all - most also saw modest increases.
Check Richard Baxter's posts - he is brilliant at this sort of thing and I'm sure he had something recently on choosing your homepage links in one of his presentations. You might be better off stepping back and following his approach from scratch to see what really needs to be there.
Hope this is of some help.
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
-
New Page Not ranking?
One of this client's top keyword is "oak beams". They already rank well in the UK for other related terms like "reclaimed oak beams" at /reclaimed-oak-beams/ and "air dried oak beams" at /air-dried-oak-beams/ We have created a page at /oak-beams/ but this page ranks nowhere? Instead the reclaimed oak beams or air dried oak beams page ranks for the term "oak beams". Any ideas why Google is swapping between those pages and not choosing the /oak-beams/ page? A few notes are that the /oak-beams/ page is newest page on the site and yes I know there are no links pointing to it but there are no links pointing to the other pages either?
On-Page Optimization | | Marketing_Today0 -
Does anyone know how I can see the original date of a link to my website?
Hello community, I'm trying to find the oldest links to my website/places that have referenced my company. By old, I'm looking for anything 2008 or older. I have access to a bunch of backlink tools, but they all log stuff based on when they discovered it, and we didn't begin using the tools until June 2013. I'm hoping there's some tool or some easy trick where I can quickly sort my links based on original date they linked to travelexinsurance.com. Thanks, Patrick
On-Page Optimization | | Patrick_G0 -
Why Is this Website Not Ranking?
HI There - I have been working on this site: http://limohireauckland.co.nz - primarily for our keyword phrase 'limo hire Auckland' - I am running a campaign for this site from the Pro tools and using the pon-page report card this url achieves an A grade for that particular phrase. The client is working on links in the local community etc but we are not appearing in the SERPS at all for most of the phrases we are optimising for. There has recently been a huge redesign on the site (approx 6 weeks ago) and the old content was not great. Am I missing something really glaringly obvious? Or am I being too impatient?
On-Page Optimization | | AllieMc0 -
Keyword at homepage
Hi there, this is the url of my homepage: http://www.sehaidoyamama.com/piensapiensa/ PiensaPiensa is not my keyword. I have selected a keyword to optimize the homepage. Does anyone know how to include the keyword in the url of the homepage? I tried to do it in the "pages" section of wordpress but I wasn't able to do it. The home page doesn't allow to change the url. Is it important to set up a keyowrd in the url of the homepage? Is it appropiate from the usability perspective? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Anyone have time to tell me his opinion?
Hi, I just redesign my site. Any opinions, suggestions will be appreciated. My site is http://nikoseleftheriou.org Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | nyanainc0 -
Drop in Internal Links to Root
This morning I noticed in Google Webmaster Tools that my internal links to my root domain (Home Page), dropped from 428,000 to 58,000. It appears that this could be my header or footer links back to the home page that Google is not showing any more. My programmers claim they have not made any changes over the last 30 days. My rankings and traffic are normal. Any cause for concern?
On-Page Optimization | | tdawson090 -
If I have too many on-page links can I reduce it with nofollow tags or do the links have to be removed?
On my site I have a top nav drop down menu but once visitors go to one particularly large subsection, that menu is repeated on the left for easier viewing. As a result, I shoot over 100 links on page. Can I put nofollow or noindex tags on the left side links and reduce my "official" on-page links count or do I have to actually eliminate some of the links? Thanks, Oak
On-Page Optimization | | CSA-2316710 -
100 links on one page
we're recommended 100 links or less on one page. is the 100 links including header and footer links?
On-Page Optimization | | jallenyang0