Things That Make You Go Hmm - Duplicate Navigation Links

I get some great questions from time to time via email from readers. One really made me go hmm this morning. The email asked if duplicate navigation links took away from page rank flow. Let me show you want he meant. There are sites that will have a logo in the header linked to the home page, a navigation text link that might say "Home" that links to the home page and perhaps even the site name in the footer linked to the home page. In essence this is three links on one page linking to the same page. The question was, say there are 7 links to other internal pages on a page and in essence 10 total links on the page, would this mean that each link gets 1/10th of the juice or 1/8th being as 3 of the links are duplicate. The closest I can really find to an answer is here from SEO Moz.

Quoted from link:

p.s. Two good questions were asked in the comments that deserve addressing in the post. First, this would appear to apply to the position in the code, not on the actual visual representation of the page, as Google isn't currently running 30+ billion documents through visual page analysis. Second, as far as PR "leaks" go, ideally you'd only want one link from any page to any other, but the original PR formula appears to do this for you, as they don't consider multiple votes for a URL by a single page to provide benefit (each page can only vote for another once).

Also if you search Google website itself, you will come across pages that have more than one link to the same page. So if they do it, you should be fine without leaking juice passed. Now let me say, I am not so concerned about page rank as I am just link juice. Page rank is just a number in my eyes. I want the most juice passed from page to page.

Now another interesting thing I did come across in my research is that by trying to use the site name in the footer as anchor text linking to your home page, COULD cause a Google penalty. Read more here from Rand.

Ok, now for my own recommendations. If your logo is linked to your homepage, I would at the very least make sure you have the ALT text value of the image filled out as you should do with EVERY image regardless. In my opinion by looking at my own stats on various sites, I see very very few people actually click the image anyway. So in my opinion I would un-link it. Secondly if you have a few links to the home page with the anchor text "Home", I do not see it as a problem. Thirdly though if you are using the site name text in the footer linked to the home page in addition to an anchor driven "home" link, I would un-link as well. Let me say though that if it is a brandable name, I do not see a problem, but if it is targeted spammy keyword phrase, I would un-link it. Normally this is just a copyright notice of the site and to avoid trouble I would un-link it. The same goes for a site that may have the site name in the header as an h1 header tag. I am going to even un-link it on this very blog to see if it hurts anything.

If you make ANY of these changes, I would notate them in your journal of the changes you made and when you changed them. Watch your rankings on some of your highest ranking keywords and see if it makes ANY difference good or bad. You can always go back and undo the changes, but I really think my suggestions hold water based on the research.

Keep up the great questions as well. I lost an hours worth of production, but did enjoy it. If something else makes you go hmm, let me know.

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