How to avoid too many "On Page Links"?

[Hermski]

Hi everyone

I don't seem to be able to keep big G off my back, even though I do not engage in any black hat or excessive optimization practices. Due to another unpleasant heavy SERP "fluctuation" I am in investigation mode yet again and want to take a closer look at one of the warnings within the SEOmoz dashboard, which is "Too many on page links". Looking at my statistics this is clearly the case.

I wonder how you can even avoid that at times. I have a lot of information on my homepage that links out to subpages. I get the feeling that even the links within the roll-over menus (or dropdown) are counted. Of course, in that case then you will end up with a crazy amount of on page links. What about blog-like news entries on your homepage that link to other pages as well? And not to forget the links that result from the tags underneath a post?

What am I trying to get at? Well, do you feel that a bad website template may cause this issue i.e. are the links from roll-over menus counted as links on the homepage even though they are not directly visible? I am not sure how to cut down on the issue as the sidebar modules are present on every page and thus up the links count wherever you are on the site.

On another note, I've seen plenty of homepages with excessive information and links going out, would they be suffering from the search engines' hammer too? How do you manage the too many on page links issue?

Many thanks for your input!

[Chris.Menke]

You're not going to get penalized for too many links from your pages to other internal pages that have decent-customer oriented content. CSS rollover menus count as links, as long as you can see the link in the html--even links in JS rollovers may be counted these days--so hoping to hide them isn't the answer for the typical webmaster.  Rather, strongly consider usability first and link accordingly.

[Hermski]

Hi Chris

Thanks for your answer. Well, that's good to hear. I looked around for more threads related to the subject and as you hinted, even if the number of on page links is above 100 (not in the 1000s of course), it should be ok, if they are relevant and add to the user experience.

Oh yeah, I am not trying to hide links or menus I am perfectly fine with the content offered on the site and where it takes the visitors, but I guess there's not much you can do about the links count, if the ones within menus are tracked as well. Unless your site consists of only a few pages... Then you may be able to make it under a 100 links, but it doesn't sound feasible.

Thanks again!