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.
Link flow for multiple links to same URL
-
Hi there,
my question is as follows:How does Google handle link flow if two links in a given page point to the same URL? (do they flow link individually or not?)
This seems to be a newbie question, but actually it seems that there is little evidence and even also little consensus in the SEO community about this detail.
- Answers should include source
- Information about the current state of art at Google is preferable
- The question is not about anchor text, general best practises for linking, "PageRank is dead" etc.
We do know that the "historical" PageRank was implemented (a long time ago) without special handling for multiple links, as e.g. last stated by Matt Cutts in this video: http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-one-page-two-links-page-counted-first-link-192718
On the other hand, many people from the SEO community say that only the first link counts. But so far I could not find any data to back this up, which is quite surprising.
-
I totally agree on the focus thing in general - it's not helpful to act with PageRank in mind when it comes to layout decisions etc.
But: For large websites (e.g. 100,000 pages and up) crawl rate, indexing and rankings of deeper parts of the site depend heavily on the internal link graph. Taking a deeper look at the internal link graph gives us a lot of useful information in these cases, does it?
Now: Think of links sitting in a template that gets used on 50,000 pages. A little change here is likely to cause quite a difference in the internal link graph.
For example I've run PageRank simulations with both models on a smaller website with only 1,500 pages / 100,000 links. For many pages, the little difference ends up with 20-30% more or less internal PageRank - for these individual pages, this could be crucial for crawling, indexation and rankings. Still not useful?
Since moz runs it's own iterative PR like algorithms: How do you guys handle this with mozRank / mozTrust? Which model leads to better correlations with rankings?
-
- The links both get PageRank flow...
- The link value gets divided, though, so it wouldn't exactly double the value.
- The link extraction process might choose to only select one link from the page based on certain factors (perhaps ignoring some links not because they are duplicative but based on location, or other qualifiers)
Here is Matt Cutts talking about this very issue. And here again. It is the closest thing we have to an answer.
I think the reason for the "first link counts" is really an extension of an understanding of PageRank. Let's say a page has 1 outbound link. It gets 100% of the value passable by that page. Now, let's say the page adds another link, but it is the exact same link. Now, each link gets 50%. The sum total is 100%. It is as if the 2nd link were never added. But, this calculation changes depending on the other links on the page. Let's say a page has 2 links on it. One to you, one to someone else. 50/50. If you get another, you jump to 67/33. Slightly better. As the page increases in number of links, your additional link approaches a doubling of the first link's value. So on one end of the spectrum it is valueless. On the other end of the spectrum it doubles.
The other question is whether anchor text is counted for all links. Some experimentation indicates that only the 1st anchor text matters. This might also indicate the selection / extraction process mentioned in #2.
That all being said, I think I agree with Matt Cutts on this one. This is such a small issue that you really should focus on bigger picture stuff. It is interesting, yes, but not particularly useful.
I hope that helps!
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
-
Should posts show in multiple categories?
Hi all, For context, I'm trying to Silo my content more efficiently. I've just moved all content into their own SILO'd categories and removed them from duplicate categories. As such, posts now sit only in 1 category. My question here is: Should my posts be showing in both the parent category and its sub category or just the sub-category? I've currently got this only showing in the sub-categories it's relevant to. For example:
On-Page Optimization | | xtrapsp
Post name: Shimano Fishing Rod Review
Parent Category: Fishing Rods
Sub Category: Shimano And the post only shows inside the Shimano Category0 -
Too much internal linking?
Hi everyone, Too much of anything is not good. In terms of internal linking, how many are too many? I read that the recommended internal links are about 100 links per page otherwise it dilutes the page's link equity. I have a concern about one of our websites - according to search console, the homepage has 923 internal links. All the pages have a corresponding /feed page added to the page URL, which is really weird (is this caused by a plugin?). The site also has an e-com feature, but it is not used as the site is essentially a brochure and customers are encouraged to visit the shop. I assume the e-com feature also increases this number. On the other hand, one of the competitors we are tracking has 1 internal link site-wide. Ours is at 45,000 site-wide. How is it possible to only have 1 internal link? Is this a Moz bug? I know we also need to reduce our internal links badly, however, I'm not sure where to start. I don't know how these internal links are linked together - some aren't in the copy or navigation menu. When I scan the homepage links using 'check my links', the total links identified for the homepage is only 170. kAeYlTM
On-Page Optimization | | nhhernandez0 -
To NoFollow or to NoIndex internal links
I all, I have recently taken over a fairly large e-commerce site that I am trying to "fix" and have come across something that I need a second opinion on. A Semrush audit has revealed that there are a heck of a lot of internal nofollow links (over 90 000) that point to predominantly 4 pages from the Header of each page in the site, these are change currency pages to show clients different currencies and a members login page. The pages are: /?action=changecurrency¤cy=EUR /?action=changecurrency¤cy=USD /?action=changecurrency¤cy=GBP /members/ My opinion is that these pages should just be no index pages and they should be followed. instead of being indexed and no followed? Any thoughts on this out there?
On-Page Optimization | | cradut0 -
Best Tool for Retrieving Multiple URL Word Counts in Bulk?
I am doing some content analysis with over 200 URLs to go through! Does anybody know of, or can recommend any bulk on-page word count checkers which would help with the heavy lifting? Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | NickG-1230 -
Multiple domains for the same business
My client purchased over 500 URLs for targeting various customers and ranking for different keywords. It is for the same business though. What is the best strategy to deal with this kind of approach in your opinion. They use different meta data for each of the URLs starting with brand name in meta title. Are there any other points to keep in mind when developing strategy for all those URLs. Is this a good approach?
On-Page Optimization | | alicaomisem1 -
How to Structure URL's for Multiple Locations
We are currently undergoing a site redesign and are trying to figure out the best way to structure the URL's and breadcrumbs for our many locations. We currently have 60 locations nationwide and our URL structure is as follows: www.mydomain.com/locations/{location} Where {location} is the specific street the location is on or the neighborhood the location is in. (i.e. www.mydomain.com/locations/waterford-lakes) The issue is, {location} is usually too specific and is not a broad enough keyword. The location "Waterford-Lakes" is in Orlando and "Orlando" is the important keyword, not " Waterford Lakes". To address this, we want to introduce state and city pages. Each state and city page would link to each location within that state or city (i.e. an Orlando page with links to "Waterford Lakes", "Lake Nona", "South Orlando", etc.). The question is how to structure this. Option 1 Use the our existing URL and breadcrumb structure (www.mydomain.com/locations/{location}) and add state and city pages outside the URL path: www.mydomain.com/{area} www.mydomain.com/{state} Option 2 Build the city and state pages into the URL and breadcrumb path: www.mydomain.com/locations/{state}/{area}/{location} (i.e www.mydomain.com/locations/fl/orlando/waterford-lakes) Any insight is much appreciated. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | uBreakiFix0 -
Wordpress category links not working
Hi All of sudden, my category links are not working. Any tips on figuring out what's causing this? Looks like permalink problem with newer wordpress version. I turned off all the plugins see if this cause any problems. Still not being able to find any option. Here's my site http://www.hibebefetaldoppler.com/fetal-doppler-questions-and-answers/ Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | BistosAmerica0 -
301 redirect and then keywords in URL
Hi, Matt Cutts says that 301 redirects, including the ones on internal pages, causes the loss of a little bit of link juice. But also, I know that keywords in the URL are very important. On our site, we've got unoptimized URLs (few keywords) in the internal pages. Is it worth doing a 301 redirect in order to optimize the URLs for each main page. 301 redirects are the only way we can do it on our premade cart For example (just an example) say our main (1 of the 4) keywords for the page is "brown shoes". I'm wondering if I should redirect something like shoes.com/shoecolors.html to shoes.com/brown-shoes.html In other words, with the loss of juice would we come out ahead? In what instances would we come out ahead?
On-Page Optimization | | BobGW0