Analysis of Links and Ways to Improve
By Jian Shuo Wang on 2008-03-14 13:46 · BackstageDate-Based Archive Pages
Let me start with the 60 Date-Based Archive Pages, with URL like http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/2003_04.htm
As you can see from the next chart, there are about 50 or so links. That is a clear sign of the change I made at the 40th month of my blogging.
Among the 50 links, around 40 links are given by other Date-Based Archive Pages (a design I used long time ago, and now it is removed). The other 10 are translated page, with some other pages.
The next steps are
- To add links to all the other Date-Based Archive Pages, so make sure the number is on average of 70 (60+10) for all the pages by the end of 2008Q2. (Done)
- Meanwhile, since I have added all the links to the bottom of all individual pages, and even translated page, the number will rise sharply from less than 100 to more than 2000 for every single Date-Based Page. (Done)
- There should be link to the translated page of these Date-Based Archive also - to provide more help to users (Done)
- The same thing should happen for Translated Pages, so at the end of each page, there should be link to the Monthly Archive Pages of the corresponding Monthly Archive Page. (Done)
**Update **Intermediate Result May 6, 2008
Most of the links are found on April 13, 2008. Wait and see this number increase to more than 2000 in near future. Since all the user comment page, and translated user page also added the link, this number may raise to 20000 - hmm… This is scary since a page with that many links can be problematic. But I thought twice, and think a clear directory of content helps the user, so it should be OK with Google as well.
End of Update
All Translated Pages
Translation is a function to provide readers some hint about what I am writing about if they don’t understand Chinese or English. I feel much better that I can point my reader to a language that they can read. Although the machine translation does not work so well, and the translated text is by no means perfect, at least it offers a way.
I am now providing 10 languages other than the language it is written in. So, in Google Webmaster Tools, or the Page Link Report in particular, there should be at least 9 links to any translated page. I have added the “Other Languages” link in April, 2008, so it should increase to 10 the next quarter when Google do the full index. I am not sure why for some page it is only 5, 4 internal links. Will find out. The other interesting thing is, the number for translated page is pretty consistent - most of them have 9 internal links.
GOAL: The goal is to double this internal link number, from 9 to average 18 at the end of 2008Q2.
There are several ways to do it.
- Provide Previous, and Next link on all pages (including Date-Based Archive Pages, Category-Based Archive Pages, Individual Archive Pages, and all the translate), thus all pages should have two more internal link (one from the previous post labeled Next, and the other is from Next post labeled Previous) (DONE)
- Provide related links. If I provide a related link to the articles that include the related link (related means in the same category), we can easily have many pages in the same language linking to this page. If there are 10 articles in a category, any of the translated page in this category should have 9 other internal links pointing to this page. This is a good thing. (Done)
With above links, we should be able to archive the GOAL of 18 links each.
**Update **Intermediate Result May 6, 2008
End of Update
Individual Entry Pages
Individual Entry Pages have far more links, and it is not so consistent. Typically, they will have 26 or more links, while some, like the page in this chart, has 4502 external links.
What are the 26+ links? Let me do a breakdown analysis.
- (1) There is for sure there will be one link from Archive Page, and the last found date is always very late - March 27, 2008 for this case.
- (1) The second is the Archive directory listing page. Actually, this page brought many trouble to me. Since it reveals the hidden files, like *.htm.static file, it caused some serious problem that .static files are competing with the real HTM file, and cause big problems.
- (1) Category Archive Page
- (1) Date-Based Archive Page
- (9) 9-10 translated page pointing to this file.
- (3) There are 8 comments for a sample page, and I saw 3 of them. The 3 comments shows something in common: 1) there is a link to that page (since there is no pagination for the commenter’s page, too popular people, like myself, don’t have a link to all the comments in the page. 2) They are pretty early - 4 digits comment ID.
- (3) There are three pages from CN link page: http://home.wangjianshuo.com/cn/20071102_aeaecaecae.htm, http://home.wangjianshuo.com/cn/2007_11.html and its category archive page: http://home.wangjianshuo.com/cn/cat_blogging.html. This page is found out to be very useful, and almost every individual page has the link. This perhaps means any link is good link, no matter how may links in the page. The rumor that only 150 links on a page is analyzed is not true in this case.
- (5) There is a huge disadvantage of the current “TOP 9 in Related Page Strategy”, since for older pages, like this, there is no incoming links from other pages in the same category. In this case, only few static pages (the historical pages) link to this page. There are 5 of them
Altogether, they are 22+ links. So, what is the approach to improve internal links for these pages?
GOAL The goal is to increase the average internal link for the individual archive page from current 22+ to **44+ **by the end of 2008Q2. Here is what I am going to do.
- Obviously, the most significant improvement will comes from the User’s Comment domain (http://user.wangjianshuo.com). I will make changes to help search engine effectively locate the different pages of user’s comment, and thus index all the user comments. This will create something that the internal link number should equal to the number of comment, which is 10 to 20 at least. It has been proved that all tho
se article with very random commenter have a very higher number of internal links.
- Add full list of related articles to every page, so every page deserve enough links.
- Provide more translation for the comment pages.
**Update **Intermediate Result May 6, 2008
End of Update
GOAL: Final goal is to have 50K internal links, instead of current 29K by the end of 2008Q2. (Update: On May 6, 2008, there are 382986 internal links).
Other things to Do
- Verify all my sites in Google Webmaster Tools (DONE)
Useful Links
Date [site:wangjianshuo.com](http://www.google.cn/search?complete=1&hl=zh-CN&newwindow=1&rlz=1T4GGLS_zh-CNCN269CN270&q=site%3Awangjianshuo.com&meta=&aq=f) [site:wangjianshuo.com inurl:tag](http://www.google.cn/search?sourceid=navclient&hl=zh-CN&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLS_zh-CNCN269CN270&q=site%3Awangjianshuo.com+inurl%3Atag) [site:wangjianshuo.com inurl:fr](http://www.google.cn/search?complete=1&hl=zh-CN&newwindow=1&rlz=1T4GGLS_zh-CNCN269CN270&q=site%3Awangjianshuo.com+inurl%3Afr&meta=&aq=f) April 14, 2008 73,800 3,080 1,650 April 23, 2008 69,500 3,090 1,910 May 6, 2008 148,000 3,120 6,340
Things to Do
- Remove the tag page to avoid duplicate content problem (DONE)
- Error in this link (DONE_
Errors found in Google Webmasters
The following errors are found in the webmaster tools. I will check the result later. In the following format.
Error | April 14 number |
Duplicate meta descriptions 19 <- Make it unique
Short meta descriptions 23 <- Make it longer
Missing title tags 26 <- This is by design. Do not do anything for it.
Long title tags 1 <- Make it correct (why some tag page is not displayed)
Short title tags 1 <- Also make it right