Ranking test: can there be too many links to your home page?

1. Ranking test: can there be too many links to your home page?
In an online webmaster forum, a webmaster described the link experiment that he did with his websites. He tried to find out how linking to the home page affected his rankings.


What did the webmaster test?

The webmaster tested the effect of links from sub pages of his website to his home page. He tried links to the home page of his website from the navigation and from the content and he tried links with and without keywords.
The test was done with a 4 year old domain name with a dedicated IP address. The web pages were HTML only. The website ranks top 5 in Google for its main, second and third keyword phrases and it has a total of 90 pages with unique content.

What were the results of the test?

It seems that too many links to the home page of your website can have a negative effect on your rankings:
Linking to the home page from every page in the content with the same keyword caused a six pages drop in rankings (-6 pages). Linking to the home page from every page in the content using keyword variations caused a three pages drop in rankings (-3 pages). Linking to the home page from the navigation with "main keyword" also caused a six pages drop in rankings (-6 pages). Linking to the home page from the first 10 pages listed on Google.com for "site:domain.com/*" increased the ranking from 5th to 3rd (+2 positions).
The webmaster also observed the following:
Linking from the content using keyword variations was effective to a point, after which the rankings dropped. There seems to be a page threshold. If the number of pages that link is even slightly above the threshold, the rankings will drop.

Does this mean that you shouldn't link to your home page?

It's hard to tell whether the results of this experiment are valid because there are too many other variables that influence the rankings of a web page.
It doesn't sound sensible that Google will downrank a web page that has a link to its home page on every page. Most users expect a link to the home page on every page of a website and even Google has a link to its home page from every page.
As Google's usual webmaster advice is to focus on the website user, it seems implausible that Google would penalize home page links.
We think that it's more likely that the ranking drops are caused by Google's change filter. If you change your web page contents, Google will temporarily downrank your web pages. This has been described in a Google patent.

High positions on Google depend on much more than the internal links on your website. If you want an analysis of all important factors that influence the position of your website on Google, analyze your site with IBP's Top 10 Optimizer

Four important rules: how to get a #1 ranking on Google

1. Four important rules: how to get a #1 ranking on Google
A number 1 ranking in Google's search results for the right keyword can mean a lot of visitors and a lot of sales. That's why so many people want to be on Google's first result page.
Unfortunately, many people still don't know what it takes to convince Google that your website is more relevant than the millions of other websites on the Internet. There are four simple rules that will help you to get your website on Google's first result page:
Rule #1: Don't try to fool Google

Google wants to return the most relevant web pages for a search query. They want to provide the best answer to a search query.
If you try to get a high ranking for a keyword for which your web page isn't really relevant then you won't get good results. Actually, you might be accused of spamming. If your website consists just of ads and affiliate links then it will be extremely difficult to get good rankings.
Make sure that your web pages will answer the questions of people who search for your keyword. The better your web pages match the interest of the web searchers the better rankings you will get. It takes some time to create good content but it will pay off in the long run.

Rule #2: Your web pages must show Google that they are relevant

A website about used car parts cannot get high rankings for a keyword such as "brain surgery". A high ranking for the keyword "used car parts" would be very beneficial to that site.
The problem is that Google must be able to find out that your web page is relevant for the keyword "used car parts". For that reason, you have to optimize your web pages. Optimizing your web pages simply means that you make it easy for Google to find out what your website is about.
When Google visits your web pages, it will analyze the following elements of your web pages:
The URL structureThe title tag and the meta tagsThe body textHeadline tagsImage alt attributesYour site architecture and the internal linking structure of your siteThe outbound linksMany other factors in the HTML code of your web pages
Each element can contain your keyword and show Google that your website is relevant for that keyword. This doesn't mean that you can simply insert your keyword in these tags and that's it.
You can also over-optimize a website and that can get your website banned from Google's search results. It's important that you optimize the right elements and that you insert your keywords in the right frequency. Analyzing dozens of web page elements can be very time consuming. IBP's top 10 optimizer can help you to do this quickly and easily.

Rule #3: Other websites must confirm that your web pages are relevant

In addition to optimized web page content, Google heavily relies on the links from other websites to your site. Basically, the other websites have to confirm that your website is relevant for a special keyword.
The more websites link to your website, the more visible it will be to Google. The more other websites use a special keyword as the linked text in the links to your website, the more important is your website for that keyword.
A web page that has been optimized for the keyword "used cars" can also get high rankings for the keyword "pre-owned cars" if enough websites link with that text to the page.
It is also important that the other web pages are related your site. If a website that is about vintage cars links to your "used car parts" website then this will have a bigger effect on your search engine rankings than a link from a candy shop website.
A link from a web page that only links to car related web pages is also more valuable than a link from a web page that links to all kind of pages. Getting the right links is crucial if you want to get on Google's first result page. IBP's link builder helps you to get these links.

Rule #4: Your website must have a clean history

The age of your domain and its history will also be considered by Google. A domain name that has been around for a long time will get high rankings more easily.
However, if your domain name has been used by spammers before, you might still suffer from the ranking penalties that have been applied to the previous content.

If you follow the rules above and change your web pages accordingly, your website will get top rankings on Google. It cannot be done over night but it's definitely something that can be done within a few weeks if you do the right things. slight advantage in terms of clickthrough rates because users can easily read the urls, the decision to use database-driven websites does not imply a significant disadvantage in terms of indexing and ranking. Providing search engines with dynamic URLs should be favored over hiding parameters to make them look static."