Heh gotta love the SEO community!
Posted by: Marketing Guy Date posted: November 20th, 2006 Published in: Link Building, Rants n Drama, Search Engine Optimisation, Speculationhttp://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3158871.htm
Basically the original poster asks a question about duplicate content based on a blog post he read (I assume it was this topic from Pubcon):
“No two links should point to the same page”
Why not? Anyone expand on this?
A reasonable request based on a topic which is pretty complicated. However the resulting “discussion” made me laugh - it’s so typical of the SEO community to take something at face value and run a mile with it without looking into a little bit deeper…
The confusion has arisen from the terminology used in the original blog post, where the panel members at the Pubcon roundtable (Duplicate content issues):
Types of dup include multiple URLs going to same page, similar content on different pages, syndicated content, manufacturers’ databases, printable pages, different languages or countries, different domains and scraped content.
A “page” here is refered to as a piece of content. The “URL” is the direct URL used to reach the content. So a simple example would be http://example.com and http://www.example.com both leading to your homepage - 2 URLs, both leading to the same “page”.
However, this was misinterpreted by the good folks over at WMW (shocker!) who took the statement to mean that multiple links to any URL could cause duplicate content. Ie, if you had a 10 page site, every page linked to “Home” and caused 10 duplicate version.
OK, fair enough some of the folks may not have read the report on the WebmasterWorld Pubcon session…but then maybe think before posting comments such as…
- This is pure nonsense
- I hate to say it in such strong terms but this is BS.
Hat tip to moderator jdMorgan for stepping in and clarifying the situation with a perfect explanation / clarification and a statement that I think should preceed every comment posted on every forum on the net:
“Reading earlier posts in this thread may save some embarassment to those who wish to assume the worst….”
Now here’s a thought for the forum junkies out there. For every stupid comment made without thought that is subsequently brought to light - how many aren’t? Worth considering while you base the future of your business on information you read on forums.
MG
Comments
The problems with pages being accessed through various different URLs is rampant throughout the search engines.
We have been fighting with clients of ours to fix their URLs for months, but they face large technical issues with their e-commerce providers that limit their ability & speed to combat the multiple URL and duplicate content issues.
If webmasters and e-commerce providers could get their act together, the online world would be a much cleaner and more concise place to be.
Aye I’ve had similar issues with clients in the past (in fact just cleaned up 50k duplicate pages on a site that another SEO agency had “missed”).
Even Wordpress produces the same content on different URLs (categories / archives), although problems can be largely avoided with some intelligent management of templates and category tagging. Or like me, you can ignore it!
Different standards for my own sites tho! 
Man I just managed to get my own comment on my own blog filtered into Askimet spam filter!
I thought that thread was over when it became apparent that what was meant by Adam was that two URLs shouldn’t have the same content. Sorted with 301s and robots.txt.
With that said, I still think that much more attention needs to be paid to link structures. When is it necessary to have two or more links on the same page point to another page? I see that technique used often on MLM sites that usually consist of two pages, the home page, which is usually a long text page, and the action page, which is linked to several times from the home page. For example, ‘Make Money From Home” as anchor text used 15 times on the home page pointing to the action page.
I also see the same technique used by people that want several phrases with different keywords in anchor text on one page. I don’t like either technique.
Granted, that wasn’t the question being asked by the original poster, (although that intent could be inferred from the poster’s choice of phrasing).
So, what does it say to a search engine when a single page has 2 or 5 or 8 links pointing to another page? How does that affect the flow of PageRank (or page importance if you prefer)?
I don’t think multiple links from one page to another is that big a deal (probably doesn’t have any SEO impact). Most sites I designed (before I got lazy and started using CMSs) had header, footer and side navigation to key pages, so any given page would have 3 links to home, contact, about, etc. Fairly standard design process IMO.
MG
[…] This post about links and duplicate content, followed up by this post on links and the SEO community, coupled with my weekend browsing of HO scale model train accessories brought up some points about linking that I feel are often overlooked. Bear with my comparison theme here, after all, I spent the entire weekend working on model trains… […]
I don’t worry too much about replicated navigation links, but those in-context links are a different story.
Perhaps but do you think the impact will be noticable if any at all?
I read on the various PubCon posts that named anchors are treated as such (and don’t cause duplicate content).
Therefore:
http://www.example.com/page1.htm
http://www.example.com/page1.htm#widget
http://www.example.com/page1.htm#stuff
…would all be viewed as the main URL http://www.example.com/page1.htm (ignoring the #element) and not cause duplication, but would be seen as 3 URLs pointing to the same page (from the same source).
I’m sure that example is used frequently and innocently.
Another example - you have regular text link to a page, and maybe an image (advert) promoting that page also - fair use.
In these cases (and IMO even the example of the 2 page sales pitch type site) the links do suggest where the important content is held and as such number of links to any page from any one other page may be a factor (to a certain extent before it gets labelled as spam).
I’m not too up to speed with the technical nitty gritty of the PR algo - does it go into detail about same-page multi-linking?
I think the impact can be quite noticeable if done correctly.
For example, page2 links to page1 with a link from the first paragraph- Z-28 LT1 Modifications
page3 links with How to Perk up Your LT1
page4 links with More Added Horsepower Bolt-ons for LT1 Engines
etc. All in-context, all relevant, and from pages on how to increase horsepower for Z-28 LT1 engines.
I like to create mini-authority pages within the site. In addition, create a mini-hub, where a single page that links to all the LTI horsepower increase techniques.
The rather than try to acquire inbound links to the homepage, I can concentrate on acquiring links to the mini-hub page, and gain better control over what pages I promote in the SERPs.
Ah interesting approach - certainly the use of synonyms for on page optimisation is fairly common practice so its logical to assume that internal link text is factored in the same way.
Plus the creation of mini hubs within a site is just good logical design - integration (for example) blog posts that feed category news headlines to mini hubs can create great entry points for a site that are much more likely to encourage natural linking.
It’s really the difference between bog standard dry SEO (the same keyword in H1, title, links, etc) and more advanced SEO-meets-marketing, which IMO is the way forward as “templated” SEO is becoming more antiquated.
Adam said in comments that he indeed was speaking about two links on a page pointing to the same place.
Adam on Links
Heh looks like I got confused as well.
I read the WmW post shortly after reading a SEOroundtable summary of a pubcon session (link in my original post), where Brian White from Google is quoted as saying:
“Types of dup include multiple URLs going to same page…”
The discussion was realting to dup content and “page” was referring to “content” (ie 2 different URLs for the same content causes dup content issues).
And to try and salvage some relevance from this post (:)) I do agree with Adam’s comments on your blog - from a user point of view, confusing link structure is a turn off.