Pop up question and link flow?

[BobAnderson]

Does a pop up like the one on this site www stressfreeprint co uk (top left corner about us, who we are) count as an external link or would link juice not flow to it.

I like to have a few pages that i don't want to waste link juice on but would still like to have them and hope this is the answer.

[DirkC]

Hi,

Not sure where you see the popup - it looks like a normal dropdown navigation (it's triggered by javascript but the links are in the HTML).

I would get over the concept of wasting link juice on internal links - it's absolutely normal (and even good for your visitors) to have pages like 'about us, contact us' and there is no need to hide these links using javascript or by putting nofollow's on them.

Check this article from Matt Cutts on linksculpting - a similar question can be found here - to quote the answer:

"No following those links (=hiding in your case) such as contact us does not mean that link juice is retained for the other pages you want to rank for. "

Hope this helps,

Dirk

[Toddfoster]

Hello Bob,

That is a traditional dropdown menu - nothing there is going to other websites, so there are no external links. This is an internal linking situation and one that will reduce your "link juice" flowing to other pages.

In other words, for each internal link initiated on your home page, there will be a reduction in your overall link juice to other internally linked pages.

That being said, this is nothing to worry about. What you are considering is going to improve your technical ranking ability, but reduce your UX and therefore lead to less user interaction, which will hurt your technical ranking ability in the future. This is a situation where you will "fix" one problem but create 2 more in its place.

My suggestion would be to keep it as it is and improve your link profile if you are concerned about "wasting" link juice.

Happy to offer more insight if you want it and best of luck moving forward!

Rob

[MattRoney]

Hi Bob!

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