On-Page Links – Common Questions and Answers Individuals Would Like to Ask and Know
When you see the warning message of “Too Many On-Page Links,” and dig deeper into the issues:: It is a good idea to avoid having over 100 hyperlinks on whichever given page. There are several possible consequences to breaking the 100 link barrier, and a lot of individuals question how and why 100 is the magic number and if this is a hard limit or simply a suggestion. These questions are answered beneath.
Where Did We Get 100?
Groups within Google have come up with an upper limit of 100 links. This limit has been written about for numerous years and as recently as 2009 was posted by Matt Cutts. He quotes the Google guidelines as saying the early crawlers capped the amount of data they will process for whichever given web page. This was because of bandwidth limitations. The optimum amount of what will fit into those processing limits within a page was 100; thus it is wise to keep the links on a given web page to a reasonable number, less than 100.
Can You Be Penalized?
This business of keeping the number of links to fewer than 100 is in the technical guideline section, not the quality guidelines section. The 100 link limit has never been a penalty case; hence, if there happens to be 101 or 102 links on a web page, the web page will not be removed. Normally, the 100 link limit is a good rule of thumb to stick to. It is likely that Google finally started ignoring links after a certain point but this kept those more than 100 links from passing PageRank. The web page itself was not going to be de-indexed or penalized.
Is One Hundred Still The Limit?
Since the time that Mr. Cutts made his comment, the Google guidelines page he quotes, mentions the phrase “fewer than 100.” Numerous Google Webmaster Help threads likewise discuss this number. The same with numerous Google “limits,” this is probably not a concrete number, and most probably differs with site authority. As Google overcomes processing limitations, it’s likewise probable that the number has increased over time.
So, Does It Still Matter?
“Yes,” is the short answer. In SEO, the more pages that you link to, the fewer internal PageRank those individual links has. To sum up, the more links equals less PR for each link.
The real math of internal PageRank flow gets complicated fast. For instance, let’s pretend we have a basic site with a homepage and three 2nd tier web pages linked from it. Let’s likewise grossly oversimplify the PR model and say those 3 web pages each inherit 1/3 of the homepage’s PR. Let’s assume that Google caps the amount of the original page’s PR to 85 percent and does not allow a web page to pass 100% of its own PR. Don’t forget, we are not talking about Toolbar PR in this particular case but about actual PR. In this particular equation, each of the web pages inherits roughly 28 percent (0.85/3) of the original PR of the homepage. We are grossly oversimplifying a much more complex reality to drive home a point. Now, let’s expand those 2nd-tier web pages and say that the homepage links to 150 internal pages.
The diagram and PR values will look something like the following:
Divide 150 ways, the original 85 percent of the PR the homepage could pass ends up being fewer than 0.6% (0.85/150) for each and every page, hence, it’s easy to see how fast internal PR could become diluted in these cases.
What’s The Right Number?
With so many complicated SEO problems from a SEO point of view, there is no real easy answers. The website must be balanced, not to create a site structure which is too deep, or one which is too flat, or that has numerous links removed from high-authority pages. Different SEOs are in favor of flat architecture, though this makes the basic problem that it treats each and every link as being equal. One needs to ask themselves, do they truly have 150 or more web pages that each deserve equal treatment from the homepage and thus must carry equal PR? Because the logical answer to this is probably not, it is best to try and take a hierarchical and balanced approach, focusing internal PR on the most important pages first. Although it could well be outdated, the 100 link guideline is still useful and widely acknowledged.
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