Fewer out going links better for SEO?

[Stocks]

Is fewer out going links better for seo?

Not only links going to other sites but would too many links going to other internal pages be bad aswell

Take the home page of my site SportsBettingworld for example.

Say if I took off the 10 sportsbook review links in the left menu would that be any better for the home page?

[MPC]

I feel like contributing something today!

Link Juice is what you are asking about. Bascially, let's say your home page is PR 3 and you have 10 links on the page (either to internal or externla pages, doesn't really matter). That means that the PR you pass down to each page is 3/10, or 0.3 PR. If you have 30 links, then you're passing 3/30 PR which is 0.1 PR.

It may not work exactly like that in terms of numbers, but that is the general idea. The more links you have, the less benefit each link will provide. Adding or removing links doesn't affect your hompage directly, but it affects every other page that is linked from your homepage.

The idea is that most of links that point to your site will be to your homepage. As such, your homepage will have the higest PR of all your pages, and you want to pass down this PR to your internal pages. So it is only smart not to have external links on your homepage as this is the page that has the most value in your entire site in terms of link juice. Why give that away via external links? Use it to feed your internal pages instead. This is done automatically via your navigation menu anyway.

So the quesiton is simple: Do you want to use your home page link juice to feed directly to your own 10 review pages, but diminishing the overall link value of each front page link? That's the price you're paying. So what is more important? Maximizing link value to your main internal pages (as per yoru naviagtion structure) or diminishing the power of those links in order to hit more pages? There's no right and wrong way as long as you keep your total link count under control.

[Stocks]

Thanks man thats kind of what I was thinking.

Another question

Can I keep the sides menus the same and use a no follow code on the menu to the pages I dont care about so I would'nt waste link juice but that way I could still have the same navigation structure.

[MPC]

Yes that works in terms of link juice, but keep in mind that there are other elements to consider on your front page. Keyword density for instance. If your main keyphrase is "sports betting", then you want that to show up regularly (but no over do it). By keeping the extra items, you are slightly reducing your keyword density.

When I look at yoru home page, the keywords you specify in the metadata are: "sports betting, guide, betting, sports, sportsbook, forums, internet". First quesiton: Are these appropriate? The idea is that what ever keywords you'll pick, you'll want to see on the homepage a few times. My advice: Revise those kewords and use things that people would actually type in google to find your site. If I search "sports" that doesn't mean I'm looking for gambling content. It's not specific enough, and its a term that is pretty much impossible to rank high with. Same deal with forums. What kind of forums? Go for "sportsbetting forums" for instance. Be more specific. Think about 3 or 5 keyphrases that you want to target (actual small phrase, not individual keywords), use these in your meta data and then use them on your homepage. Make them stand out by linking on them, bold, italic, underline. Use alt tags on your images that relate to those keywords when possible.

Then get external links to your homepage on those specific keywords and that should really help your SERPs.

Regarding the navigation, there are pros on cons, even with the nofollow. There are different models. Ultimately, you are writing for humans. Go with what makes the site useful and easy to use. Also think long term. What if you end up with a total of 30 reviews + 20 guides? Are you going to side pile all of these?

I like the concept of providing these shortcuts to your visitors directly on the hompage. It makes it usefull, but when there is too much content, it makes cluter and it's not good for SEO. If you absolutely want to keep them, consider a "top 3 guides" approach, with a link to the rest of your guides (or something like that). Then you get the best of both worlds.

[sirtiner]

Do google use the meta keyword anymore? i think i have read somewhere that they don't use it.

About no follow, i have never used it but i might need it on my startpage aswell, im thinking of adding this to my trackers, it's php 301 redirects, is it neccesery?

[MPC]

I don't know that they don't use it at all, but many have said they don't count as much as they used too. It can't hurt your site to use them.

[Pking]

Do google use the meta keyword anymore? i think i have read somewhere that they don't use it.

About no follow, i have never used it but i might need it on my startpage aswell, im thinking of adding this to my trackers, it's php 301 redirects, is it neccesery?

I don't believe that meta keywords have a positive impact on your rankings in Google - however, having the same keywords for every page of your site can trigger a duplicate content penalty.

[Gambling Dude]

Do google use the meta keyword anymore? i think i have read somewhere that they don't use it.

About no follow, i have never used it but i might need it on my startpage aswell, im thinking of adding this to my trackers, it's php 301 redirects, is it neccesery?

No they do not - I am looking for the Google announcement but can not find it. It is in the Webmaster Forum somewhere.

[Gambling Dude]

Can I keep the sides menus the same and use a no follow code on the menu to the pages I dont care about so I would'nt waste link juice but that way I could still have the same navigation structure.

You have to be very careful with no-follow. With a no-follow link you are telling the SE's that you are linking to a site but not "voting" for it. It is not good enough for any of my "link juice" basically.

Do you really want that non-vote of confidence in your global navigation menu pointing at your own pages?

Google states that a page should not have more than 100 links. Whether they count links in the nav as part of that count is debatable. Google has said they do not count global nav links but not sure about other SE's.

In a study and more pertinent in this case was that any more than about 50- 70 links per page and people got "link blind" and didn't see them or clicked off the page all together.

Here is the site, that study is in there somewhere along with some great info: Writing for the Web

(not mine - no way I care to write or research that much )

[Giorgio]

No they do not - I am looking for the Google announcement but can not find it. It is in the Webmaster Forum somewhere.

This is correct. Most of the major SE's (Google, Yahoo, etc) do not use the meta keyword tags at all. You might as well leave them out (and hide your keywords to competitors).

There are a couple of meta search engines that still give some weight to the meta keywords tag, but hardly anybody uses them.

On the other side, the meta description tag is still used, be it as the description shown in the SERPS the most.