What's the maximum number of external and internal links that should appear on a page and how important is this? I have a directory that I'm currently in the process of optimizing but because of the nature of the site the number of external / internal (for category/tagging purposes) links is high. Any suggestions please ...
I'll answer my own question here just in case anyone needs an answer. If you own a directory then inbound links on a single page (e.g. home page) are likely to be high. I do not think this has a detrimental effect since there are numerous strong directories out there that have many inbound links on their pages. I'm guessing the number of outbound links should be of a sensible number.
Google recommend that you have no more than 100 links on a single page. I don't think it matters if that's internal or outbound links. See here.
That's great advice cormac, thanks. I've recently added tagging to my site and the sitemap has jumped to over 300 I think! I'll cut it down to the important areas of the site. Due to tagging and consequently the large number of pages, should I stop the bots from discovering these pages?
I also try and keep it under 30 as well. Too many links looks very ugly to the eye. KowDot its up to you what pages you don't want the bots to crawl. If you can find them in the Search Engines and they hold some info value then let the bots go ahead.