I'm doing some work for a local business and they currently have a navigation menu on an html site that has a large navigation menu. There are currently 60 internal links on most pages because of this large nav menu. If by reducing the navigation menu I could cut it down to roughly 20-30 internal links per page I feel I could get more link juice to pass onto the most important pages (10-15 practice area pages). I would make a few new (1-2) pages that are broad and link out contextually to the pages I just removed from the navigation with the intention of keeping everything easily navigable. These new pages would be added to the navigation menu. Is this really worth the effort of doing? Could it potentially harm any rankings in the process? Any thoughts? Thanks for your help on this, looking forward to the responses as a new member
You could potentially hurt the current rankings for those pages that you would be removing. Since they are all internal pages I don't really know if it's worth removing them. It is true that by removing them you will be passing more link juice to those other pages. But, you are still risking the loss of rankings and possibly traffic to those pages that you've removed. In my personal opinion, I suggest leaving the pages all in tact - and focus on more quality backlinks pointing into the site. Also, consider getting backlinks straight to those big pages you discussed wanting to get more link juice going to by removing your other internal pages. The more sites you have linking into it the more juice that will be coming in to spread around to all of the pages. That is what you truly want overall anyways.
It has been some time since SEO experts stopped giving much importance to PR. So stop worrying about it. Just make sure that you add more high quality back links and check your backlinks in webmaster tools. As long as your SERPS are not going down, you are doing good.
No doubt, I was just looking at some other possible solutions. Sounds like it's best to leave it alone and continue on adding quality backlinks. Thanks for the input everyone!