To many links on page. Big or small issue for eCommerce

[mark_baird]

On my site I have around 3k pages and about 90 categories. Most of which have a sensible number of products but some have only a few products and some have loads.

if I have say 40 links on the page ignoring the producand is it a big problem if I have more than 60 products on the page? Assuming a link limit per page of 100

user wise we have filters and sorts for thme to find what they breed without issue. But simply from an seo point of view how damaging would I be to have the  23 "to many links on page issues? Worth fixing by making two categories and splitting out products even tho it would hinder the user.

[ThompsonPaul]

This question has been asked many times here in Q&A, Mark, so if you do a search, you'll find lots of background,.

Bottom line, take it as a very broad recommendation, but make sure user experience is by far the determining factor in what constitutes an appropriate number of links. (The "100 links per page" is a very broad guideline that first came up when search crawlers were much more stingy about how much of a page they would crawl and index.)

From what you describe, the higher number of links serve a definite and intentional purpose for users. That's way more important than hitting some arbitrary (and it is arbitrary) link limit.

One thing to definitely be aware of though - the overall ability of a page to send link juice to other pages is divided by the number of links on a page. This means a page with high numbers of links will only send a small amount of link juice through each page.

You'll want to look at other structural ways of communicating that link juice to the most important pages in order to have your internal linking build up your primary pages. Sometimes this is as simple as not having the full navigation present on every page - takes some conditional coding, but stop & think whether a user needs/expects the full site nav on every page. (Watch for extraneous links in sidebars & footer that may not apply to specific pages as well.)

Hope that helps?

Paul

P.S Using no-follow on links doesn't preserve link juice - it used to when it was first introduced, but search engines changed that quite a while ago. You may still see it recommended by SEOs who haven't kept up with the changes.

[mark_baird]

I have already fallen for and now repairing the nofollow issues on my site.

I have a top drop down nav and a sidebar in most of my site. The top Nav has got the primary and secondary cats linkable and the third tear is hidden in the nav script. (I'm not a developer but I believe it's conditional coding that has been used)

Would you mind having a look at my site and letting me known if I should kill the side menu or  if I should do something different. (Ignore the nofollows. They are getting removed this week.)

also I need to deal with my footer links. Needs a proper restructure as it has enveloped into s stupid system.

But any advice is very Welcome.

www.centralsaddlery.co.uk is my site.

[ThompsonPaul]

Actually, I'd say your sidebar is already doing what I'd recommended, Mark. The content of that sidebar changes according to what topic the visitor has clicked on, so I would say it satisfies the conditional requirements very well. The fact the article links in the sidebar also change according to the topic of the page is great! (and even better that the article links disappear altogether if there isn't something relevant - nicely done.)

As far as the footer's concerned, I'd be tempted to get the About Us, and Contact links more visibility in the primary nav - these are more usability than straight architecture concerns, but many first-time visitors may want to get an idea who they'd be dealing with, but wouldn't notice the small, light links in the footer. If you are able to find time to expand your blog posting, I'd suggest featuring it higher up as well. Honestly, you have an interesting (and long!) history and I'd be tempted to feature that aspect more.

There are certainly still some conversion optimization opportunities, and I suspect some Local SEO work could also be beneficial, but in general I'd say the link architecture is quite good.

Hope that addresses what you were asking?

Paul

[mark_baird]

thats really helpful thanks.

ill have a think about the about us link. Its a design V usability issue and i cant decide in this case which should win. I like to keep things as clean as possible.

content and blogs wise we have mountains to do but we are working on it and i'm in the process of recruiting bloggers and more writers but its hard to get quality writers with specialist equestrian knowledge. If you get a good writer with no horse background they stand out like a sore thumb!

I plan to rewrite the about us and faqs to optimise them more effectively, this will include adding details and length.

Thanks again for the advice. Been running fast into the SEO darkness and i have not been 100% sure it was in the correct direction so your comments give me a bit more confidence to keep going! thanks.