100 Link Rule on Google

boobookitty · 2009-02-16, 02:08 AM

I have read that Google prefers 100 links or less for optimal SEO.
I have a few blogs that have something like 50 plus posts, and this is in 6 months or so - and they are already way beyond the 100 links.
One blog I trimmed as much as I could and got it down to about 150, but I am about to add some more dimensions to it - more pages, more services, and so my link count will go up.
Ok so my question is - is this a typical problem with blogging - in using tags, categories, internal linking, blogrolls, pages etc.
And if so, can anyone offer some words of wisdom?
Btw if this has been discussed before please just feel free to post the link of the thread and/or merge my post.
I tried to look up "100 + links" and got every thread with "links" in it, and "100" by itself gave me nothing.
Thank you very much :=)

balls_deep · 2009-02-16, 11:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by boobookitty

I have read that Google prefers 100 links or less for optimal SEO.

Ok so my question is - is this a typical problem with blogging - in using tags, categories, internal linking, blogrolls, pages etc.

I think you will find that google doesn't like more then 100 outgoing links, internal links are a totally different monster.

The truth is no one has the algorithm and some people can fly by just fine with even hundreds of outbound links, where others get penalized for less then 50 links.

My advice is to build for the surfer and stop trying to figure out google's ever changing search algorithm.

walrus · 2009-02-16, 12:21 PM

Below is the relevant quote from an interview done on the SEOmoz Blog. Click this link if you want to read the entire interview
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/questions...gles-spam-guru

Question:
Google has noted in the past that a maximum of 100 links per page was wise and would insure that all of the links on a page would be crawled. Does this rule still apply or is there some flexibility?

* A) The rule is still a good one – even very important pages with lots of PageRank should stay away from linking to more than 100 other pages.
* B) There's some flexibility. If you have a high PageRank page with lots of link juice, we may spider well beyond 100 links per page – possibly even 2-300 depending on how valuable we feel that page to be.
* C) The rule really only applies to pages of low importance/PageRank. Googlebot now regularly can crawl 150-200 links per page without breaking a sweat and those numbers can be even higher for pages we consider particularly important.
* D) Although we may crawl more than 100 links per page (maybe even many hundreds), we don't recommend linking to that many because of the dilution of link juice that occurs. Instead, use sub-navigation pages to help ease the link per page burden.
* E) B & D

Answer
* E) B & D
Matt's exact words - The "keep the number of links to under 100" is in the technical guideline section, not the quality guidelines section. That means we're not going to remove a page if you have 101 or 102 links on the page. Think of this more as a rule of thumb. Originally, Google only indexed the first 100 kilobytes or so of web documents, so keeping the number of links under 100 was a good way to ensure that all those links would be seen by Google. These days I believe we index deeper within documents, so that's less of an issue. But it is true that if users see 250 or 300 links on a page, that page is probably not as useful for them, so it's a good idea to break a large list of links down (e.g. by category, topic, alphabetically, or chronologically) into multiple pages so that your links don't overwhelm regular users.

boobookitty · 2009-02-16, 01:07 PM

Ok thank you both very much - that makes a lot more sense now!
I was using the meta tag analyzer to help raise the seo of my blogs a bit and it has given me a lot of good info about title, tags, etc.
But it counts every link on my blogs as far as categories, internal linking, tags, comments etc, not just the outgoing ones.
And I have always read that internal linking is good - so I am wondering here why am I being penalized?
I really did need to clean up my categories and tags as I tend to be a bit errr umm over-effusive

but I was cutting back so many my blogs were becoming one-dimensional, and what is the point in that? And still I had over 100.
I won't worry so much about it now - I have waaay less than 100 external links on any of my blogs.
Thanks again

2009-02-16, 02:08 AM	#1
boobookitty A woman is like beer. They look good, they smell good, and you'd step over your own mother just to get one! Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 51	100 Link Rule on Google I have read that Google prefers 100 links or less for optimal SEO. I have a few blogs that have something like 50 plus posts, and this is in 6 months or so - and they are already way beyond the 100 links. One blog I trimmed as much as I could and got it down to about 150, but I am about to add some more dimensions to it - more pages, more services, and so my link count will go up. Ok so my question is - is this a typical problem with blogging - in using tags, categories, internal linking, blogrolls, pages etc. And if so, can anyone offer some words of wisdom? Btw if this has been discussed before please just feel free to post the link of the thread and/or merge my post. I tried to look up "100 + links" and got every thread with "links" in it, and "100" by itself gave me nothing. Thank you very much :=)

2009-02-16, 12:21 PM	#3
walrus Oh no, I'm sweating like Roger Ebert Join Date: May 2005 Location: Los Angeles Posts: 1,773	Below is the relevant quote from an interview done on the SEOmoz Blog. Click this link if you want to read the entire interview http://www.seomoz.org/blog/questions...gles-spam-guru Question: Google has noted in the past that a maximum of 100 links per page was wise and would insure that all of the links on a page would be crawled. Does this rule still apply or is there some flexibility? * A) The rule is still a good one – even very important pages with lots of PageRank should stay away from linking to more than 100 other pages. * B) There's some flexibility. If you have a high PageRank page with lots of link juice, we may spider well beyond 100 links per page – possibly even 2-300 depending on how valuable we feel that page to be. * C) The rule really only applies to pages of low importance/PageRank. Googlebot now regularly can crawl 150-200 links per page without breaking a sweat and those numbers can be even higher for pages we consider particularly important. * D) Although we may crawl more than 100 links per page (maybe even many hundreds), we don't recommend linking to that many because of the dilution of link juice that occurs. Instead, use sub-navigation pages to help ease the link per page burden. * E) B & D Answer * E) B & D Matt's exact words - The "keep the number of links to under 100" is in the technical guideline section, not the quality guidelines section. That means we're not going to remove a page if you have 101 or 102 links on the page. Think of this more as a rule of thumb. Originally, Google only indexed the first 100 kilobytes or so of web documents, so keeping the number of links under 100 was a good way to ensure that all those links would be seen by Google. These days I believe we index deeper within documents, so that's less of an issue. But it is true that if users see 250 or 300 links on a page, that page is probably not as useful for them, so it's a good idea to break a large list of links down (e.g. by category, topic, alphabetically, or chronologically) into multiple pages so that your links don't overwhelm regular users. __________________ Naked Girlfriend Porn TGP free partner account

2009-02-16, 01:07 PM	#4
boobookitty A woman is like beer. They look good, they smell good, and you'd step over your own mother just to get one! Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 51	Ok thank you both very much - that makes a lot more sense now! I was using the meta tag analyzer to help raise the seo of my blogs a bit and it has given me a lot of good info about title, tags, etc. But it counts every link on my blogs as far as categories, internal linking, tags, comments etc, not just the outgoing ones. And I have always read that internal linking is good - so I am wondering here why am I being penalized? I really did need to clean up my categories and tags as I tend to be a bit errr umm over-effusive but I was cutting back so many my blogs were becoming one-dimensional, and what is the point in that? And still I had over 100. I won't worry so much about it now - I have waaay less than 100 external links on any of my blogs. Thanks again