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.
Are links in menus to external sites bad for SEO?
-
We're building a blog on a subdomain of the main site. The main site is on Shopify and the blog will be on wordpress.
I'd like to keep the user experience as simple as possible so I'd like to make the blog look exactly like the main Shopify site.
This means having a menu in the blog that duplicates the Shopify menu.
So is it bad for SEO to have someone click on the 'about us' button in the blog subdomain (blog.mainsite.com) which takes you to the 'about us page' on the main shopify website (mainsite.com)?
-
Its not bad at all in my opinion, especially if its a sub domain.
All its going to do is pass on SEO value to your root domain.
If you'd like to keep the link juice on your blog intact, you could make the menu links no-follow.
Greg
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Our clients Magento 2 site has lots of obsolete categories. Advice on SEO best practice for setting server level redirects so I can delete them?
Our client's Magento website has been running for at least a decade, so has a lot of old legacy categories for Brands they no longer carry. We're looking to trim down the amount of unnecessary URL Redirects in Magento, so my question is: Is there a way that is SEO efficient to setup permanent redirects at a server level (nginx) that Google will crawl to allow us at some point to delete the categories and Magento URL Redirects? If this is a good practice can you at some point then delete the server redirects as google has marked them as permanent?
Technical SEO | | Breemcc0 -
How can I stop a tracking link from being indexed while still passing link equity?
I have a marketing campaign landing page and it uses a tracking URL to track clicks. The tracking links look something like this: http://this-is-the-origin-url.com/clkn/http/destination-url.com/ The problem is that Google is indexing these links as pages in the SERPs. Of course when they get indexed and then clicked, they show a 400 error because the /clkn/ link doesn't represent an actual page with content on it. The tracking link is set up to instantly 301 redirect to http://destination-url.com. Right now my dev team has blocked these links from crawlers by adding Disallow: /clkn/ in the robots.txt file, however, this blocks the flow of link equity to the destination page. How can I stop these links from being indexed without blocking the flow of link equity to the destination URL?
Technical SEO | | UnbounceVan0 -
Is SEO effected of putting an external link in the primary navigation of a website?
I have a customer, www.xxx.com. This site has good traffic, low bounce rate (28%), 2:00 min avg time on site, and 45% return visitor rating. No spam rankings, etc. Good load time. Another site, www.yyy.com, has sent out a request for them to add them as a new link in www.xxx.com's primary navigation - using a title such as "abc" (not the name of the company or site of yyy.com). This second site, www.yyy.com, has a bounce rate of 98%, avg time on site is :30, and 10.2% return visitor rate. No spam flags noted in Open Site explorer. Plus they are asking other sites similar to www.xxx.com to do the same thing. Questions/Concerns and Feedback appreciated: Will yyy.com's analytics and quality pass back to xxx.com and cause Google or algorithms to flag or penalize xxx.com? (It ranks #1 for quite a few things.) The relevancy between the sites is good -same industry, same business objectives. From a usability standpoint, isn't it more appropriate to place a link to another website in a different way? e.g. a promotional graphic wit a link or anchor text links? Isn't it more appropriate to ask another business for links - not using the primary nav of a site? (It seems yyy.com is essentially asking other sites for 'free advertising/promotion.' Thanks!
Technical SEO | | mundsack0 -
Self Referencing Links - Good or Bad?
As an agency we get quite a few of our clients come to us saying "Ooo, this company just contacted me saying they've run an SEO report on my site and we need to improve on these following things" We had one come through the other day that had reported on something we had not seen in any others before. They called them self-referencing links and marked it as a point of action should be taken. They had stated that 100% of the pages on our clients website had self-referencing links. The definition of self-referencing is when there is a link on a page that is linking to the page you are currently on. So for example you're on the home page and there is a link in the nav bar at the top that says "Home" with a link to the home page, the page you are already currently on. Is it bad practice? And if so can we do anything about it as it would seem strange from a UI point of view not to have a consistent navigation. I have not heard anything about this before but I wanted to get confirmation before going back to our client and explaining. Thanks Mozzers!
Technical SEO | | O2C0 -
Seo For Forum Sites
I have forum site.I've opened it 2 months ago.But there is a problem.Therefore my content is unique , my site's keyword ranking constantly changing..Sometimes my site's ranking drops from first 500.After came to 70s. I didn't make any off page seo to my site.What is the problem ?
Technical SEO | | tutarmi0 -
What is the best way to find missing alt tags on my site (site wide - not page by page)?
I am looking to find all the missing alt tags on my site at once. I have a FF extension that use to do it page by page, but my site is huge and that will take forever. Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions1 -
Move established site from .co.uk to .org - good or bad idea?
I am currently considering moving our site from the current .co.uk domain to the .org version which we also own. The site is established and indexed for 7 years, ranks well and has circa 10k traffic per month which is mainly UK & US traffic. The reason for the change to the .org domain is to make the site more global facing and give us the opportunity to develop the site into multi language within directories (.org/es/ etc.) and then target those to the local search engines. For the kind of site it is (community based) it wouldn’t really work to split this into lots of separate country targeted domains. So the choice is to either stick with the .co.uk and add the other foreign language specific content in directories within the .co.uk or move to the .org and do the same (there is also a potential third option of purchasing the .com which is currently unused but that could be pricey!) We are also planning a big overhaul of the site with redesign, lots of added content and reorganisation of the site – but are thinking that it would be better to move the domain on a 1:1 basis first with the current design, content and URL structure in place and then do the other changes 2 or 3 months down the line. I have read up on SEOmoz, google guidelines etc on moving a site to a new domain and understand the theoretical approach of moving the site and the steps to take (1to1 301 redirects, sitemaps on old and new etc) and I will retain ownership of the .co.uk so the redirects can remain in place indefinitely. However having worked so hard to get the site to where it is in the search engines and traffic levels I am very worried about whether the domain change is a good move. I am more than happy to accept a temporary fluctuation in rankings & traffic for 1 – 4 weeks as reported may happen as long as I can be sure it will return after a temporary period and be as strong (or almost as strong) as the previous rankings / traffic. Looking for peoples experiences to give me the confidence / reassurance to go ahead with this or any info on why I shouldn’t Thanks in advance for your advice. Adrian.
Technical SEO | | Zilla0 -
Is link cloaking bad?
I have a couple of affiliate gaming sites and have been cloaking the links, the reason I do this is to stop have so many external links on my sites. In the robot.txt I tell the bots not to index my cloaked links. Is this bad, or doesnt it really matter? Thanks for your help.
Technical SEO | | jwdesign0