Buth The most common example I see of links that are what I call "out of position" are links in the header to privacy or Terms of Service (TOS) pages. Those pages are not a priority, so stuff them in the footer. In some niches, I would argue that links to social media accounts are also wasted in the header and better served just in the footer. πππ
Mat Β» Buth Assuming links near the start of a page are more valuable, the social links might be telling Google they are more or just as important as the website. Especially for WordPress themes that don't have a straightforward way to nofollow those top bar links. I don't know if I buy that. Google knows websites do this, so maybe they don't give preference to the first links. I think they will treat links in the body of text separately and that social links at the top probably won't lower their value. Would love to know if a study has been done on this as one client has their 4 social links first.
Lori Appleman π So I deal exclusively with ecommerce which may yield different results. We do Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) audits often (and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) audits). The heat and clickmaps do show that about 20% do go to the footer to seek customer service links. What you may be able to skip in this mobile first world is a repeat of product categories. Hiding product categories under "shop" tends to reduce conversion rates as it makes it less clear what you offer and requires an added click to find the products. So this is not necessarily advice I'd recommend for a store. πππ½3
Mat Thanks, good information. Do you change the Home link to a keyword? I try to when it fits. But am curious if anyone has tested it and it definitely helps, in which case I will start doing it more often. And are you sure more links on a page makes them weaker? I chose a page with far more external links than another the other day, for a link insert. And didn't even ask for it to be near the start, as I usually do. I just thought it was a better, longer page and probably got more traffic. It looked like a sponsored post too, with links to a website/brand mention in the first paragraph. That website should have got the lions share of the juice. So there are lots of possible negatives, but I think my link and the 5 or so other external links would also get more juice than the page that looked weaker, on the same website. The other page might of only had one external link. Also, I like mixing things up i.e. not always have a link on a page with my just site and maybe one authority link, so I think there is value in that. I sometimes put a link in a heading as that might have a bit of extra benefit, like being near the start. I am not convinced link juice is limited and less valuable when there are more links on a page. You are still getting a link from the same website (authority). I agree having a link near the start might help, but otherwise I just don't think it is as simple as more links = less value. Again, would love to know if it has been tested so I know for sure. Thanks.
Ta I have embedded scraped Google reviews from Google My Business (GMB) into my website. Each of these reviews are linked with the respective Google url. So there are a lot of links on one page. Is that a bad approach?
Daniel Very well written and I agree with just about all of it but I would like to raise one point. It's as if you're forgetting or in this post not addressing, the blog post section of a website "I get it you're not trying to write a book here but β¦ So from your blog post section the click depth magic number is actually 3 and you don't have to nor do you have to do all of your blog posts in the following way but you should have quite a bit of the following: You should have clusters of posts I like to call them solar systems. You would have your master post which should be 10x editorial content. Now there will be a link in that post that points to one of your site pages. But I consider that a bridge so in that case I'm just fine with a third depth. In fact that third depth can even be an off-site post, directory, or feature showcase such as an infographic directory that links to the infograph you have on your second tier. So let's say you have a blog post about plumbing. This post as I indicated needs to be editorial level, schema "an art in and of itself", video, infographic, 2500 words, and a very well drilled down and optimized post about plumbing using only the most direct industry content you can write. So that is your sun. Now you will build planets to orbit that sun. These new second tier smaller posts get more granular about key points of your master post. And to just keep it all on site in this example, our third tier I recommend you use for definitions and terms. Those third tier posts "moons" are what orbit the planets which orbit the Sun. Now you not only connect going linearly towards your sun page but you also link laterally from moon to Moon and from planet to planet. This cluster almost becomes one piece of content when done right. And the jump from your post section cluster to a site page is your third click technically, but in this case it's quite alright. However for site pages definitely no more than 2 indeed. So in summary I believe site pages click depth 2 max blog post pages can go up to 3. IMO π oh and readers be careful that you do not go creating flat URL structures trying to fix your click depth issues. Flat URLs are a completely different problem and a very big one. Ojiako What's your thoughts on adding no follow to links on the footer that aren't priority links?
