Google Cautions Against Utilizing Excessive Amount Of Internal Links

Contact Us

Services

Related Posts

Category

John Muller of Google clarifies that utilizing an excessive number of internal links on the same page can dilute their value, and goes over what to do instead.

This topic is discussed during the Google Search Central SEO hangout recorded on July 2, 2021.

A website owner submits a question asking if there are any risks or dangers associated with utilizing an excessive amount of internal links.

The topic of external links comes up regularly during these hangouts, yet rarely is the impact of internal links at any point talked about.

Internal links are significant for SEO as they send signals to Google about which pages are generally essential to a particular website. They do not send signals as external links, yet they actually matter.

Moreover, Google utilizes internal links to better understand a website’s structure. A sitemap can likewise be utilized to impart as well as communicate that information, yet a logical structure of the internal links helps make it even more clear.

With all the help internal links provide, could an excessive number of them be a bad thing? This is what Mueller says.

Google’s John Mueller on utilizing an excessive amount of Internal Links

Utilizing internal links too generously all through a website can lead to problems. The first issue is Google will not be able to understand the website’s structure.

At the point when asked as to whether an excessive number of internal links on a page do more harm than good, Mueller reacts:

“Yes and no. I think, in the sense that we do use the internal links to better understand the structure of a page, and you can imagine the situation where if we’re trying to understand the structure of a website, with the different pages that are out there, if all pages are linked to all other pages on the website, where you essentially have like a complete internal linking across every single page, then there’s no real structure there.
It’s like this one giant mass of pages for this website, and they’re all interlinked, we can’t figure out which one is the most important one. We can’t figure out which one of these are related to each other. And in a case like that, having all of those internal links, that’s not really doing your site that much.
So regardless of what PageRank, and authority, and passing things like that, you’re essentially not providing a clear structure of the website. And that makes it harder for search engines to understand the context of the individual pages within your website. So that’s the way that I would look at it there.”

The second problem is utilizing such a large number of internal links will dilute their value.

One internal link can signal to Google that a page is significant to the website, however, it starts to seem less significant as more links are added.

On the off chance that there are twenty internal links on a page, they will not all be treated with the same significance as if there were only one or two links.

“And similar to the second question you had there, with regards to internal links doing more harm than good — yes, if you do dilute the value of your site structure by having so many internal links that we don’t see a structure anymore, then that does make it harder for us to understand what you think is important on your website.
And I think providing that relative sense of importance is sometimes really valuable, because it gives you a little bit more opportunity to kind of fine tune how you’d like to be present in the search results.
If you tell search engines pretty clearly and directly, well this is my primary page, and from there you link to different categories and the categories link to different products, then it’s a lot easier for us to understand that if someone is looking for this category of product, this is that page that we should be showing in the search results.
Whereas if everything is cross-linked then it’s like, well any of these pages could be relevant. And then maybe we’ll send the user to some random product instead of to your category page when you’re actually looking for a category of products.”

As indicated by Mueller’s advice, website owners should target having a structure to internal links that resemble their own website’s structure.

That might actually resemble: homepage > category page > services page > request a quote page.

Or on the other hand, in case you’re adding internal links to something like a blog the article you could add contextual links to related articles on the website.

While some internal links are good, more isn’t better. You will send stronger signals with fewer links.

What Could Be Done To Improve Or Remove Old Low-Quality Content?What Could Be Done To Improve Or Remove Old Low-Quality Content?
Why A Website May Rank For Unusual Keywords? Explained By GoogleWhy A Website May Rank For Unusual Keywords? Explained By Google
Google Cautions Against Utilizing Excessive Amount Of Internal Links

John Muller of Google clarifies that utilizing an excessive number of internal links on the same page can dilute their value, and goes over what to do instead.

This topic is discussed during the Google Search Central SEO hangout recorded on July 2, 2021.

A website owner submits a question asking if there are any risks or dangers associated with utilizing an excessive amount of internal links.

The topic of external links comes up regularly during these hangouts, yet rarely is the impact of internal links at any point talked about.

Internal links are significant for SEO as they send signals to Google about which pages are generally essential to a particular website. They do not send signals as external links, yet they actually matter.

Moreover, Google utilizes internal links to better understand a website’s structure. A sitemap can likewise be utilized to impart as well as communicate that information, yet a logical structure of the internal links helps make it even more clear.

With all the help internal links provide, could an excessive number of them be a bad thing? This is what Mueller says.

Google’s John Mueller on utilizing an excessive amount of Internal Links

Utilizing internal links too generously all through a website can lead to problems. The first issue is Google will not be able to understand the website’s structure.

At the point when asked as to whether an excessive number of internal links on a page do more harm than good, Mueller reacts:

“Yes and no. I think, in the sense that we do use the internal links to better understand the structure of a page, and you can imagine the situation where if we’re trying to understand the structure of a website, with the different pages that are out there, if all pages are linked to all other pages on the website, where you essentially have like a complete internal linking across every single page, then there’s no real structure there.
It’s like this one giant mass of pages for this website, and they’re all interlinked, we can’t figure out which one is the most important one. We can’t figure out which one of these are related to each other. And in a case like that, having all of those internal links, that’s not really doing your site that much.
So regardless of what PageRank, and authority, and passing things like that, you’re essentially not providing a clear structure of the website. And that makes it harder for search engines to understand the context of the individual pages within your website. So that’s the way that I would look at it there.”

The second problem is utilizing such a large number of internal links will dilute their value.

One internal link can signal to Google that a page is significant to the website, however, it starts to seem less significant as more links are added.

On the off chance that there are twenty internal links on a page, they will not all be treated with the same significance as if there were only one or two links.

“And similar to the second question you had there, with regards to internal links doing more harm than good — yes, if you do dilute the value of your site structure by having so many internal links that we don’t see a structure anymore, then that does make it harder for us to understand what you think is important on your website.
And I think providing that relative sense of importance is sometimes really valuable, because it gives you a little bit more opportunity to kind of fine tune how you’d like to be present in the search results.
If you tell search engines pretty clearly and directly, well this is my primary page, and from there you link to different categories and the categories link to different products, then it’s a lot easier for us to understand that if someone is looking for this category of product, this is that page that we should be showing in the search results.
Whereas if everything is cross-linked then it’s like, well any of these pages could be relevant. And then maybe we’ll send the user to some random product instead of to your category page when you’re actually looking for a category of products.”

As indicated by Mueller’s advice, website owners should target having a structure to internal links that resemble their own website’s structure.

That might actually resemble: homepage > category page > services page > request a quote page.

Or on the other hand, in case you’re adding internal links to something like a blog the article you could add contextual links to related articles on the website.

While some internal links are good, more isn’t better. You will send stronger signals with fewer links.

Contact Us

Services

Related Posts

Category