Best On-Site Internal Linking Practices?

[MountainMedia]

Hi everyone,

Our company works extensively with ecommerce website, and we're beginning to wonder with all of the impending Google updates what our best bets for internal linking practices will be, in particular when it comes to menu options. We typically set up our navigation with top-level categories in the main menu, then drop downs to the sub-category level pages. Our question is, should the links in the drop-down menus be followed, and if so, should they be followed links across all pages of the website, or just on the homepage menu list, or not at all?

We're trying to figure out what will pass the most internal linking power without being too much and overly "spammy," I guess.

Thanks for your input!

[TakeshiYoung]

Nofollowing a link does not cause more link power to flow to your other links, it just causes that link juice that would have gone to that page to "evaporate", resulting in a loss of link equity. In general, you NEVER want to nofollow your own pages.

As far as internal linking for ecommerce sites goes, I generally look to amazon.com & overstock.com for good site architecture and good ecommerce SEO in general.

[NaescentAdam]

Ooops, I'd done this on my own site.

We had a menu linking to all pages on every page. I tried limiting this but the design of the site put some limitations on me, so I implemented rel=nofollow on some internal pages....

I think now I'll go remove them.....

[MountainMedia]

The only issue I think we would run into with this is that some of our catalogs get rather large, and we don't want to have too MANY on-page links. We know that having no-follow links won't cause more link power to flow to other links, but we're wondering what would be the best, most efficient, most powerful way to handle a large catalog without overloading the links on each page...

[TakeshiYoung]

Having just the top level categories in the main menu like you said is a good option. No need to overload the users with too many choices. Then once the user is in a specific category, the sidebar nav can show navigation links for subcategories.

[MountainMedia]

We do have that implemented on some sites...but for others, we prefer the drop-down feature for easier navigation on the user end. So when a user hovers over the top-level category, the sub-category options appear below it, so less clicking through to a number of different pages - users can go straight to the sub-category they're looking for straight from the homepage. I guess these are really the links we're curious about - the sub-category links in the drop-down menus...to follow or not to follow?

Thanks for all of your input so far - much appreciated!!

[NaescentAdam]

Have you tried turning the drop down off and running a test to see how your goals compare? Or even if just the pages / visit etc.. drop.

[TakeshiYoung]

Again, you don't want to nofollow your internal links. Nofollowing your links has no positive impact, and just prevents any link value from flowing to your internal pages.

If you have a particularly large category structure, one thing you may want to try is limiting the links in your drop-downs to the top subcategories. Even if you have 10 different menus with 20 different subcategories each, chances are 80% of your users are only selecting 20% of the links (or less). Install a site tracker such as CrazyEgg or Clciktale to figure out which links your users actually use, and eliminate the ones that don't get many clicks.

So your navigation would look something like this:

Automobiles

Tires
Oil
Batteries
Accessories
More Auto Products

[Doc_Sheldon]

Takeshi is right, James- you gain nothing by adding nofollow to internal links. In addition, if you attract attention with a lot of it, you could even incur a penalty. Matt Cutts has stated more than once that nofollowing internal links isn't advisable, except perhaps in limited special circumstances, such as to a contact form or privacy policy. If you get carried away with internal nofollow, it could look like you're trying to sculpt pagerank, and that could cause you problems you don't want to have.

[MountainMedia]

Thanks so much for the input, everyone. Really appreciate all of your opinions. We'll do some experimenting with the navigation layout as per your recommendations and see how we can make it work for us!

Thanks again, guys!