Can You Have Too Many Internal Links?

1. 71

   Cagsilposted 11 years ago

   Hey Veterans,
   
   I am curious. Recently Google made changes and many people are or have lost a lot of traffic, and I am wondering if the problem is too many internal links.
   
   I only ask because since Google's change, I have lost a significant amount of traffic, however many of my hubs are linked internally quite a bit.
   
   So, I have chosen to eliminate some of the internal links, such as my poems were all linked together (i.e. I had all my poems, each one linked to every other one).
   
   Now, before making this change traffic drop badly, but after I made this change and waiting a bit(so my views are included) the traffic to them has slightly increased.
   
   Thus, I am looking for input.

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      janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      As for most things 'Google' there is no clear advice. I think relevance of the link is more important than the number. Supposedly the anchor text has to vary and be meaningful (as it looks more natural). And the links should be in the body of the text not as a full-title list.
      
      I add a list 'Related Articles' to my hubs because the reader may be interested even if Googlebot isn't. But I choose the links carefully to ensure relevance. The seemingly irrelevant links that HP shoves into my pages are a REAL problem, but I can't stop them. So having some extras of your own may reduce the damage.
      
      see the quote below and the link
      
      "Google analyzes the quantity, quality, and relevance of websites that link to yours. When Google looks at your link profile, they’re looking at such things as what types of websites link to yours, how quickly you acquired these links, and the anchor text (the clickable words) used by the linking website. When Google's algorithm detects such things as a large number of new links or an imbalance in the anchor text, it raises a big red flag."
      
      also see http://www.stateofsearch.com/penguins-a … we-do-now/

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         Cagsilposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Thank you.

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2. 81

   Mark Ewbieposted 11 years ago

   This is very interesting and I am glad you posted it.
   
   I have been revisiting all my pages, but in particular one I have been having a battle with Google over.  It has dropped, recovered, dropped in several stages over the last few months.  I have done the obvious things - unstuffing keywords, improving content, reducing adverts - then the latest drop occurred.
   
   It was one of my few pages where they are in a Group obviously, but I also had a Link box saying you might like to read these other pages - and I had created a sort of circular group of interlinked pages.
   
   I got rid of the links, completely, just leaving the Group thing.
   
   Traffic returned.
   
   May be coincidence of course because it is difficult to be really sure, but given that Penguin was about spammy links sort of, and a set of pages all just pointing to each other smells a bit spammy...
   
   edit: I know I'm not a veteran but I'm getting there.
   
   

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   1. 71

      Cagsilposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Thank you Mark. Much appreciated.

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3. 73

   Barbara Kayposted 11 years ago

   On website every page has a lot of links to the same website for navigation purposes. That is why it makes me wonder if linking to other pages on a site makes any real difference. I do know the relevance of the links are important though.

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   1. 71

      Cagsilposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Yeah, I know relevance is always going to matter. Thank you Barbara.

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      janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      There is also the internal vs external debate for which there is little information. Internal links are probably given less weight and internal linking within a sub is probably less of a problem.
      
      The terrible aspect of Penguin is that you can be penalised because a spammy site links to you, when you did to request or authorise the link. This is very hard to control or fix.
      
      There is also a 'dob in your mate' aspect.
      For one of my websites I was contacted to ask that a link I had to their site be removed. The advice was that this would be in my interest as in order to get reindexed they had to provide a list of sites that linked to them. It was simply a reciprocal link. I dumped all my reciprocal links. But -too late my site was Penguinised.

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4. 73

   relacheposted 11 years ago

   Search Engine Watch has had a lot to say about this recently (the short answer of which is "yes").  I recommend people who'd like to get good Penguin intel go read their site.

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   1. 55

      janderson99posted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Thanks for the suggestion.
      This is an extract
      
      "Here are four suggestions to start cleaning up your site:
      
      => If you have links from too many unrelated sites, such as directories, either remove some or try to get more links from related sites. You should have links from related websites at the minimum at 20 percent of your overall links.
      => If you have too many keyword links coming in, then vary your keywords and mix your brand name and URL in the links. Have at least 20 percent of your keyword links be non-keyword or brand-based.
      => If you are doing sponsored links, be careful! Cancel or remove any links you have from footers. Remove any sponsored links that don’t include a text description next to it. Contextual links are much better, meaning it’s better to have links from within text content of a website.
      => Make the above changes a few at a time and wait a few days to see if rankings come back, before proceeding. However, Penguin will only run periodically like Panda, so it could be weeks before any affected websites recover their rankings."

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5. 81

   Wesman Todd Shawposted 11 years ago

   I can't rightly say.  I've moved several dozen low performance hubs to blogger over the last three months, and that may have contributed to my account's traffic being more stable rather than growing.
   
   When I started here I used the link suggestion tool very liberally, and that provided my readers and I a NEGATIVE value....still finding and eliminating those bs links.
   
   I don't accept everything our PcUnix has to say, but so far as his internet philosophy goes, the man is the ACE.  If something done wasn't for the reader's benefit, it should not have been done.

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6. 71

   Cagsilposted 11 years ago

   Thank you all.

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7. 67

   carlarmesposted 11 years ago

   Google is one pain in the backside, a big pain at that. I worked on a niche website focusing on one keyword, determined to get to number one in Google, done it, got it, and then a number of months later they change the rules again and the website is not only not number one in Google it had completely gone, disappeared, evaporated. Not just one in fact, four of my websites lost their positions and the Google Adwords cost per click went up x3. Nice little money earner for Google because it costs three times as much to gets clicks on Google Adwords.
   
   Well done Google, nice bit of legalized extortion.
   
   Funny enough though, three other niche websites got to number one for organic search and I had not touched the websites for months and they had no external links at all.

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8. 86

   Marisa Wrightposted 11 years ago

   All the quotes and discussion so far, don't address the question.
   
   There's a difference between external links and internal links.
   
   External links are links from other sites and other sub-domains, pointing to your sub-domain.  If you've been going out and getting those links artificially, to the point where it's obvious, Google will penalize you - because those links are supposed to be created by your readers, not by you.
   
   Internal links are links within your own sub-domain, and it's self-evident that no one can create those links but you.  So Google is not going to penalize you because you made them!  However, Google does want to see that you're creating those links to help your readers find related content, not because you're trying to game the system.
   
   That's why HubPages are so hard on linking to your unrelated Hubs - Google can see those aren't trying to help the reader. The other question - which Google doesn't answer, as far as I can see - is, can you overdo links to other related Hubs? 
   
   HubPages obviously doesn't think so, because one of their test layouts included hundreds of related Hubs.  I've done some searching and no one seems to know for sure.  I guess it comes down to the question - does it help the reader?  If you're linking to other Hubs which are directly and obviously related, and you're not repeating the exact same links across multiple Hubs, you should be OK.

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      Cagsilposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Thank you Marisa.

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      rajan jollyposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      I think Marisa has a point here. Do Not repeat the same links within several hubs. And also include related hub links.

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9. 89

   Cardisaposted 11 years ago

   Based on what I have been reading I say "yes". When I lost some traffic I removed most of my links, both internal and external and traffic is recovering nicely. I am yet to remove links from some hubs and those are the ones still under the weather.

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   1. 86

      Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

      Cardisa, where have you been reading that internal links are a problem?  Just curious as I haven't found much to suggest they are, provided they're relevant.

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         Cardisaposted 11 years agoin reply to this

         Not specific to Hubpages, it was linking in general. I got some WebPro and Site Reference news email that talked about linking and how the Penguin might have affected it. If I find the email I will post it.
         
         I checked my links with a link checker and was surprised to see that many of the internal links were irrelevant or "bad" for my topics. Some of the links I could do nothing about like the link HP places on my hubs. Some of the bad links that affected me were even Amazon product links.
         
         After removing the offending links my traffic started to get better and some of my hubs have recovered.
         
         Maybe I was wrong and the return of traffic is just co-incidence.
         
         oh, about the relevancy. Remember that link suggestion tool...really bad idea because it does not supply links based on content relevancy. Some of my hubs as I discovered had links from back then too.

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         1. 86

            Marisa Wrightposted 11 years agoin reply to this

            Ah, I see now.  Links from other sub-domains are not internal, they're external.  Take a look on your Webmaster Tools and you'll see what I mean.
            
            "Internal" links refer to links within a blog or site.  Your sub-domain is its own site, so internal links are links within your sub-domain to your own Hubs.

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            1. 89

               Cardisaposted 11 years agoin reply to this

               I love you Marisa! Always send me in the right direction.

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10. 71

    Cagsilposted 11 years ago

    Thank you everyone. Much appreciated.

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11. 57

    shoaibgmailposted 11 years ago

    It seems you got the solution of your problem I also want to know about it is internal links is useful..? if I use external links instead of internal?

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