Too many On-Page Links on a WP based Website

[adwordize]

Hi,

I've already browsed through various of the Q&As on the "too many On-Page links" issue, but I would really need some advice concerning a WP Site with a dropdown navigation.

As outlined in the on-page report, every site has about 180 outgoing links, which pretty much is the number of site featured in the navigation. Even though the 100 link limit is somewhat outdated I'm still worried about the distribution of linkjuice from the starting page and how Google perceives the importance of the various pages.

Would it make sense to adapt the structure of the navigation, so that the starting page only links to the 5 category pages and the category pages only link to the detail pages they contain?

The site has good rankings for several pages and I assume that Google can tell that the large number of links is caused by the navigation. But with every page having appr. 180 links it may be difficult for Google to tell, which of those pages are the most important regarding internal link structure...

Looking foward to your opinion and insights!

Cheers,

Chris

[CraigAddyman]

Hey Christoph,

I think you should be more concerned by your users navigating the site rather than Google. I don't think it's really that important on the amount of link but rather the type of link and where they are on your site.

If I were you I would work on your site architecture and create a better navigation for your users and an organised site will of course be crawled better.

Also organising your site into a few categories will help the engines to sort and better understand your site and it's content but don't go over board and remember categories are a tool to help you organise your site, so pages shouldn't really need multiple categories.

Hope this helps

[adwordize]

Hi Craig,

thanks for the quick reply!

I see your point in putting Usability before SEO-related concerns

The site has thematically clear structure and pages are grouped into meaningful categories. The thing I am concerned about is the structure of the navigation itself.

For Example: Given the current Navigation, if you're on any detail page, you can select any other category pages or detail pages from other categories, thats why there are so many Links per Page. Of course, this is very convenient, as you can navigate from a 3rd level page of Category A to any other page in just one click.

The question now is, whether this type of navigation has a disadvantage in terms of On-Page Optimization, or if it doesn't really matter as Google can tell that the high number of links on every site is simply caused by the navigation.

I forgot to post the link, by the way: http:www.hlm.at/

[CraigAddyman]

I see

I don't really think it's a massive problem but to improve it why dont you take out the drop downs so rather then everything being one click away its 2 clicks

For example turn the parent pages into hubs of that category and this will cut down total number of links on pages across the site.

I hope that made sense 

Also I noticed your using tags,  I advise against these but if your going to use them you should noindex, follow these pages I checked a few and they were indexed.

This of course can cause duplicate content issues.

[adwordize]

Hi Craig,

that's exactly what I was thinking about, having 5 hub/category pages with the relvant pages in them. makes perfect sense

Thanks for the advice concerning the tags, I'll have a look at it!

Have a nice weekend!

Cheers,
Chris

[CraigAddyman]

No probs you too

[TaitLarson]

If you decide you absolutely must use tags I recommend creating or buying a wordpress theme that only shows post excerpts on the tag pages.  That should help with duplicate content.

Categories in WordPress are better for SEO b/c wordpress stores a description for categories and SEO plugins can grab this descrption and add it to the meta descrption tag in your posts HTML header.