I’ve been given the task of reducing the amount of internal links on our pages and writing my findings up for a YouMoz post on SEOMoz. I know that the myth about Google processing 100 links per page has been entirely debunked but we’re still looking at cutting unnecessary links to improve the flow of PR/link juice. I was wondering if anyone had any information, knew of articles about, or had an opinion on any of the following; 1. Whether linking to the same page multiple times in your site wide links (navi-bar) does anything. Does linking to the same URL in three places on every page make a difference or are the metrics only improved by the first link. Is there a rule of diminishing returns at work or is my “Contact Us†page getting more love than it deserves. 2. To what extent are navigation links counted as real links. I know for external links it’s better to have your anchor text inside the content but is this the same for internal links? (If so my Contact Us page is about to a makeover!) 3. If there is a magic number or ratio of links to content that will either improve or impede a page. 4. If there are any best practices for internal linking beyond having a static URL and good anchor text. 5. Anything interesting about internal linking patterns – like is it possible to funnel PR using interconnected loops? Really appreciate any help or links to articles. Like I said I’m going to be compiling this and (hopefully) publishing it so major sources will be cited.
If you look at some of the big websites around the web like bbc you will notice that there landing page / home page is just filled with internal links no real copy. Google has stated themselfs that relevance is the biggest key for each website. so a relevant link is more powerful than a click here link. so if you link says "great poems" then you would want the url to be something along the lines of example.com/great-poems i dont think that to many internal links are much of a problem as it creates more branches within the website and makes it easier for people or spiders to get around the website and find every page quicker. Not having a relevant link to a page is more of a problem as the user does not know where they are really going.
You might find this SEOmoz post useful: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-diagra...fine-the-proper-anchor-text-of-internal-links
That's true however a site like the BBC doesn't have to be competitvely optimised because they're huge anyway. If my site had the amount of links that point to some news portals I wouldn't be worrying about tweaking and tuning. Totally agree with you.
The BBC has made there landing page full of links so that the user can go into there website much quicker and find what they are looking for quicker. This is more useful for large website, but it can also be good to display your blog on this page and popular pages or pages that you want to try and promote better.