Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Sitmap Page - HTML and XML
-
Hi there
I have a domain which has a sitemap in html for regular users and a sitemap in xml for the spiders.
I have a warning via seomoz saying that i have too many links on the html version.
What do i do here?
regards
Stef
-
Sorry for late reply guys. Great advice by both of you.
@ Alan, great display on how Page Rank flows. Great illustration which i totally could never explain to clients
-
220 links on a page is absolutely not too many on any level. Many of the highest ranked sites on the internet present more then 220 links.
The particular page is question is simply a sitemap, and the page is being offered to help users navigate the site. The VerizonWireless.com sitemap I shared has 370+ links on it.
The SEOmoz "warning" is a simple feature which will be set off on any internet page with 100+ links. The SEOmoz tool does not care how well those links are presented, whether they are footer links, whether they are on a content page, what the PA of the page is nor any other SEO factor. It is simply a >100 or not warning. As such, it offers very little value.
I am in the process of compiling a list of suggested features for the tool which will help improve it's usefulness. One of the feature recommendations I am proposing is to allow users to adjust the 100 count to any number they want. Each SEO can then choose to use the default 100 number, or use a number more suited to the particular site.
The link Alan shared is a nice explanation of PR flow. It is a nice page for learning PR, but with respect to this topic it over-complicates an otherwise very simple and straight-forward question. The simple point is, the more links on a page the less link juice will flow to each link.
The goals for any web page links should be as follows:
1. Ensure all links are useful for your site. For example, you probably want PR flowing to your most profitable product/service, and to your latest additions.
2. Ensure your links are actually used. Check analytics.
3. If a link is not used or not useful, remove it.
4. Along the lines above, your links should be presented in a very user-friendly manner. You don't want a page to look like a list of nothing but links as users will have a difficult time choosing what they want. An exception would be a sitemap.
With the above in mind, keep as many links as you see fit on the page. If it is 40, that is fine. If there are 250 links on the page, that is fine as well. When you start down a path of chasing numbers such as forcing your content into "500 words" or forcing your links into "100 maximum" you fall into a pit of SEO fallacies. You are not providing the best experience for your users nor SEO.
TL;DR - Provide your links in a manner which is visually appealing, non-spammy and helpful to users. Keep in mind your need to flow PR to important pages such as your money pages. Otherwise remove unnecessary links. Whatever that number of links is, so be it. Don't try to fit your links into a "I must be under 100" or any other number mindset.
-
too many according to google. make of it what you will, does not look like it is for any technial reason anyymore, but obviously there is a limit to how much of page they will crawl.
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-many-links-per-page/You see how page rank flows, having a lot of links on your home page works to your advantage. Using numbers from Googles original algo,
Assuming every page starts with 1PR, a page passes %85 of its link juice, so if you have 100 links that’s 0.0085 each. To 100 internal pages, making them 1. 0085each , now they all pass back 85% that’s 0.857225 each, x 100 = 85.7225 back to your home page, now we do the sums all over again and again till they numbers stay static. Now this calculation relies on the internal pages having no other links, so you are unlikely to get figures as good as this, but you get the idea.
See link for better explanation.
http://www.webworkshop.net/pagerank.html check out calculator
Remember don’t stuff up your linking stuckture for the users just for the sake of page rank.I see it as like a golf swing after a lesson, if you try to do what you just learnt too much, you will get all stiff and un-natural, it’s better to swing naturally with what you have learnt in the back of your head.
-
Yes, ignore the warning.
It is possible to present 220 links in a neat, categorized manner. It is also possible to present 100 links as a jumble which is not user friendly.
You shared your presentation is similar to the example I shared which means it is user friendly so ignoring the warning is fine.
-
Nice, i really like that example that you gave. My one is similar and categorized too. Question still remains, do i ignore this warning for this page?
-
I have about 220 links
-
Wel how many do you have.
A quick way of checking is with IE, press F12, go to view menu, then link report
-
Your HTML sitemap is for users. It should present your links in such a manner as to be useful for users who are looking for a page on your site.
An example sitemap for a large site: http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/sitemap.jsp
It does not contain a link to every last page. It is more of a helpful directory. I would suggest you adjust your HTML sitemap in a similar manner. Treat is as a page of links for users.
-
So do you think that i should ignore this warning for the sitemap html page?
-
Well have a look if you can move a few out, it is good to link to as many pages as you can from the home page for the sake of PR flow. but not go over the limit, Some say the limit is 100, some say 150
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google Not Indexing Pages (Wordpress)
Hello, recently I started noticing that google is not indexing our new pages or our new blog posts. We are simply getting a "Discovered - Currently Not Indexed" message on all new pages. When I click "Request Indexing" is takes a few days, but eventually it does get indexed and is on Google. This is very strange, as our website has been around since the late 90's and the quality of the new content is neither duplicate nor "low quality". We started noticing this happening around February. We also do not have many pages - maybe 500 maximum? I have looked at all the obvious answers (allowing for indexing, etc.), but just can't seem to pinpoint a reason why. Has anyone had this happen recently? It is getting very annoying having to manually go in and request indexing for every page and makes me think there may be some underlying issues with the website that should be fixed.
Technical SEO | | Hasanovic1 -
My Website Page Speed is not increasing
HEY EXPERTS, My website page speed is not increasing. I used the wp rocket plugin but still, I am facing errors of Reduce unused CSS, Properly size images, and Avoid serving legacy JavaScript to modern browsers. you can see in the image Screenshot (7).png I used many plugins for speed optimization but still facing errors. I optimized the images manually by using photoshop but still, I am facing the issue of images size. After Google Core Web Vital Update my website keyword position is down due to slow speed. Please guide me on how I increase the page speed of my website https://karmanwalayfabrics.pk Thanks
Technical SEO | | frazashfaq110 -
.xml sitemap showing in SERP
Our sitemap is showing in Google's SERP. While it's only for very specific queries that don't seem to have much value (it's a healthcare website and when a doctor who isn't with us is search with the brand name so 'John Smith Brand,' it shows if there's a first or last name that matches the query), is there a way to not make the sitemap indexed so it's not showing in the SERP. I've seen the "x-robots-tag: noindex" as a possible option, but before taking any action wanted to see if this was still true and if it would work.
Technical SEO | | Kyleroe950 -
Home Page Ranking Instead of Service Pages
Hi everyone! I've noticed that many of our clients have pages addressing specific queries related to specific services on their websites, but that the Home Page is increasingly showing as the "ranking" page. For example, a plastic surgeon we work with has a page specifically talking about his breast augmentation procedure for Miami, FL but instead of THAT page showing in the search results, Google is using his home page. Noticing this across the board. Any insights? Should we still be optimizing these specific service pages? Should I be spending time trying to make sure Google ranks the page specifically addressing that query because it SHOULD perform better? Thanks for the help. Confused SEO :/, Ricky Shockley
Technical SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
What to do with temporary empty pages?
I have a website listing real estate in different areas that are for sale. In small villages, towns, and areas, sometimes there is nothing for sale and therefore the page is completely empty with no content except a and some footer text. I have thousand of landing pages for different areas. For example "Apartments in Tibro" or "Houses in Ljusdahl" and Moz Pro gives me some warnings for "Duplicate Content" on the empty ones (I think it does so because the pages are so empty that they are quite similar). I guess Google could also think bad of my site if I have hundreds or thousands of empty pages even if my total amount of pages are 100,000. So, what to do with these pages for these small cities, towns and villages where there is not always houses for sale? Should I remove them completely? Should I make a 404 when no houses for sale and a 200 OK when there is? Please note that I have totally 100,000+ pages and this is only about 5% of all my pages.
Technical SEO | | marcuslind900 -
Low page impressions
Hey there MOZ Geniuses; While checking my webmaster data I noticed that almost all my Google impressions are generated by the home page, most other content pages are showing virtually no impression data <50 (the home page is showing around 1500 - a couple of the pages are in the 150-200 range). the site has been up for about 8 months now. Traffic on average is about 500 visitors, but I'm seeing very little entry other then the home page. Checking the number Sitemap section 27 of 30 are index Webmaster tools are not reporting errors Webmaster keyword impressions are also extremely low 164 keywords with the highest impression count of 79 and dropping from there. MOZ is show very few minor issues although it says that it crawled 10k pages? -- we only have 30 or so. The answer seems obvious, Google is not showing my content ... the question is why and what steps can I take to analyze this? Could there be a possibility of some type of penalty? I welcome all your suggestions: The site is www.calibersi.com
Technical SEO | | VanadiumInteractive0 -
Splitting Page Authority with two URLs for the same page.
Hello guys, My website is currently holding two different URLs for the same page and I am under the impression such set up is dividing my Page Authority and Link Juice. We currently have the following page with both URLs below: www.wbresearch.com/soldiertechnologyusa/home.aspx
Technical SEO | | JoaoPdaCosta-WBR
www.wbresearch.com/soldiertechnologyusa/ Analysing the page authority and backlinks I identified that we are splitting the amount of backlinks (links from sites, social media and therefore authority). "/home.aspx"
PA: 67
Linking Root Domains: 52
Total Links: 272 "/"
PA: 64
Linking Root Domains: 29
Total Links: 128 I am under the impression that if the URLs were the same we would maximise our backlinks and therefore page authority. My Question: How can I fix this? Should I have a 301 redirect from the page "/" to the "/home.aspx" therefore passing the authority and link juice of “/” directly to “/homes.aspx”? Trying to gather thoughts and ideas on this, suggestions are much appreciated? Thanks!0 -
Where to put Schema On Page
What part of my page should I put Schema data? Header? Footer? Also All pages? or just home page?
Technical SEO | | bozzie3114
