Hello Olly, and welcome to the forums.

I've worked with similar situations and I've found that websites often can perform better whem the the total number of links on each page is kept minimal. Google does recommend keeping it below 100 - and i usually aim for much lower than that.

I don't think its really a penalty -- more like all that anchor text on a page sort of blurs or dulls the relevance signal, and too much internal linking can also make it difficult for the algo to tell which pages are most important.

Eliminating, or lowering the number of internal links in the footer is worth a try. Also note if there are many repetitions of an important keyword in the anchor text anywhere on the page. When that's done to excess, it does seem like it hurts rather than helps.

Hi Tedster,

Thanks for the advice. When implementing changes like this, is it best to do it in stages - i.e. remove a few links at a time over the course of a few weeks, or do it in one go?

Thanks

Olly

I've always done it in one shot - I don't like to send out the "I'm always tweaking my SEO" signal. Any given situation could require a judgement call, however - so do what the situation seems to require.

I have ALL my links in the front page; 900 or so in a css menu that activates when they highlight a certain category. My traffic increased and all pages are in the index.

Even if it wasn't links, having too much material that's identical from one page to the next can cause problems by pushing pages across the tipping point for appearing "too similar" to the spiders.

It's probably wise to trim some links, but also aim for the leanest possible verbiage in whatever links you keep.

Compare:

Alabama Widgets, Alaska Widgets, Arizona Widgets, ... Wyoming Widgets.

Widgets by State: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona .... Wyoming

The latter would make just as much sense to readers and the more concise wording in the navigation would help each page's unique content to stand out better for the search engines.

I tend to think that footer links are given less weight with Google and hence not a bad place to put your less important content...
Legal Notice ¦ Privacy Policy ¦ Terms of Use ¦ Contact Us ...

Buckworks suggestion is a good one. Avoid repeating widgets several time. I'm fairly sure changing this sort of anchor text helped get me out of the -950 penalty.

If you have just a few links on a page you have a much better ability to channel your link juice. And looking at Google Analytics I find very few people ever click on links at the bottom so why clutter up the page with them.

Widgets by State: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona .... Wyoming

That's how I present such links as well. I considered the other alternative for a moment but I'm glad someone can tell me why it was such a good choice.

we have about 1000 page site running through mod reqrite and we use to have 3 different footer for lets say 100 links, like 30 separate links in 1 footer and like upto 3 footer. they r simply city name no keyword attached to it for e. i. g. new york, it sud be new york widgets if refering to the new york widgets. do you think this is fine to have 3 footer or i sud only have 1 for all pages.

I though this way i can get maximum city linked from the site most of the pages rather than giving top 50 links in footer or something. i have mix 60 to 75 links per page...

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 9:08 am (utc) on Jan. 28, 2008]
[edit reason] removed specifics [/edit]