Why is THIS the Perfect Shop Homepage for SEO?

Summary

Delve into how a cluttered shop homepage can hinder your SEO rankings and how trimming down the number of homepage links can lead to a higher conversion rate. Learn to strategically distribute link juice to categories and improve your online store's search rankings with crucial SEO tips from SEOLAXY's extensive experience.

Highlights

• Crammed shop homepages can undermine SEO rankings. 🚪📉
• Deleting half of your homepage links can increase sales significantly. 📈✂️
• A clean homepage is key: fewer links, more power to remaining ones. 🧹🔗
• Authority scores help determine the ideal number of homepage links. 🔢👍
• Big changes like a homepage cleanup can trigger a Google link juice recalculation, boosting rankings. 🚀🔄

Key Takeaways

• Fewer links on your shop homepage means stronger rankings for essential categories. 📈
• Google's link juice calculation starts at the homepage; fewer links lead to better rankings for linked categories and products. 🏡➡️ 📄
• Removing unnecessary links can double the effectiveness of essential ones on your homepage. ✂️➡️🔗
• For SEO success, avoid clutter like excessive banners, sliders, and non-essential links. 🚫🖼️
• Always keep your authority score in mind; it dictates the maximum number of links your homepage should have to optimize SEO performance. 📏🔗

Overview

If you've ever wondered why your symphony of links on your shop homepage isn't translating to higher sales, you're in luck. In 'Why is THIS the Perfect Shop Homepage for SEO?' SEOLAXY unravels the tapestry of link juice and shows how trimming the fat on your homepage could skyrocket your rankings. Say goodbye to the crammed corners of your homepage and hello to sleek, SEO-optimized spaces.

With 23 years of SEO experience under his belt, SEOLAXY warns of the perils of an overlinked homepage. The video dives deep into the dark arts of link juice and categories, explaining how they can significantly lift your online store's performance. He highlights the strength of strategic link placement and shows how your homepage can become a beacon for search engines when properly streamlined.

The notion that link calculators like PageRank start at the homepage is a game changer. The crux? Fewer links, better rankings. SEOLAXY explains how to harness this knowledge: trim down those extraneous solitaires of links and fortify the critical ones. As you follow his advice, your SEO will not only solidify but flourish giving you a robust presence nodding approvingly at the top of SERPs.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to SEO and Link Juice The chapter introduces the concept of link juice in SEO and how a cluttered homepage can negatively affect search rankings. It emphasizes the importance of reducing the number of homepage links to improve sales and rankings, by channeling link juice more effectively to important categories and products. The narrator shares insights from 23 years in the field, promising to teach how to identify and remove unnecessary links while optimizing link juice flow using lesser-known SEO techniques.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Understanding Link Juice and PageRank This chapter explains the concept of 'Link Juice' and 'PageRank', which are important elements in SEO. It starts by discussing how online stores often harm their search rankings by cluttering their homepage, which is typically the default page receiving most backlinks. These backlinks transfer 'Link Juice', a form of value or authority, to the homepage. A key factor discussed is PageRank, a Google metric ranging from 0 to 10 that evaluates the quality and quantity of backlinks to determine a page's authority. This chapter emphasizes the importance of optimizing the homepage to enhance PageRank and improve SEO outcomes.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Link Juice Distribution Pyramid The chapter titled 'Link Juice Distribution Pyramid' explains the concept of 'link juice' in SEO, where domains are given a metric score that indicates their authority. Various SEO tools such as Semrush and Ahrefs have developed their metrics, like Authority Score and Domain Rating, respectively, typically ranging from 0 to 100. However, these should be viewed as rough estimates rather than precise measures. The chapter also discusses how link juice is distributed in a pyramid-like structure, starting from the top with the homepage and flowing down to categories, subcategories, and further to sub-subcategories.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Optimizing Homepage Links The chapter discusses the concept of 'link juice' in the context of optimizing homepage links for an online store. It highlights that URLs closer to the homepage tend to receive more link juice, and links in the website's menu are prime recipients of link juice due to their presence on every page of the online store. The discussion covers the disparity in link juice distribution, emphasizing that lower category pages, especially those not included in the menu, receive only a small portion of link juice. Similarly, product pages tend to get minimal link juice on average. The chapter encourages focusing on optimizing these aspects, starting from the upper levels of the site's structure.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Recommended Link Counts Based on Authority This chapter discusses the impact of link counts on a website's homepage and how it affects the distribution of 'link juice' or authority among the linked items. It explains that the fewer the number of links on a homepage, the more authority each link gets. For example, if a homepage has 100 links, each link receives 1% of the link juice. However, if there are 200 links, each only receives 0.5%, and with 300 links, each link's share is reduced to 0.33%. The chapter emphasizes the importance of limiting the number of links to optimize authority distribution.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Case Studies and Examples This chapter discusses effective homepage optimization strategies using case studies and examples. The focus is on managing links to strengthen SEO impact. It highlights the importance of discerning which links deserve to remain on the homepage and which should be removed to enhance link strength. A critical insight shared is that often, more than half of the homepage links should be deleted to double the effectiveness of the remaining links, thus increasing the rankings and sales of linked URLs. Despite its simplicity, this step is frequently overlooked in SEO practices.
• 06:00 - 08:00: The Problem with Sliders The chapter "The Problem with Sliders" discusses the importance of focusing on meaningful metrics in web optimization rather than getting distracted by vanity metrics such as core web vitals. The number of links on a homepage should be determined based on the website's authority score. A low-authority domain has a score around 30, a mid-authority domain around 50, and a high-authority domain above 70. The suggested rule is to multiply the authority score by 5 to determine the optimal number of links.
• 08:00 - 09:30: Optimizing Product Sliders This chapter discusses the optimization of product sliders focusing on the internal linking of online stores. Depending on the domain authority, there are recommended maximum limits for internal links: around 150 for low-authority domains, 250 for mid-authority domains, and 350 for high-authority domains. Exceeding these limits can be detrimental, and hence cleaning up the homepage and optimizing the internal linking structure has significant benefits. The chapter includes examples of online stores with varying authority scores and excessive internal links as a case study.
• 09:30 - 12:00: Importance of Loading Speed and Footer Links This chapter discusses the significance of loading speed and footer links on a website's homepage. It highlights the importance of understanding where links on the homepage are directing, as Googlebot only considers HTML links in the prerendered version of the homepage for calculating 'link juice'. It notes that links embedded in forms with PRG (Post/Redirect/Get) patterns and JavaScript links are not counted by Googlebot. Similarly, in websites built with JavaScript frameworks, only server-side rendered HTML links are considered.
• 12:00 - 15:00: Prefooters and Strategic Linking This chapter discusses the importance of strategic linking and the use of prefooters in web optimization. It emphasizes that rel=nofollow links should not be used for internal links as they can affect link juice negatively. The chapter also promises to identify seven parts of a homepage that could be deleted to improve rankings and sales for online stores, hinting at previously covered material related to this topic.
• 15:00 - 15:30: Conclusion and Call to Action The chapter discusses the importance of optimizing website menus based on the authority level of the shop. For low-authority shops, only Level 1 (LVL1) and Level 2 (LVL2) categories should be included in the menu, while for mid-authority shops, a few important Level 3 (LVL3) categories can also be considered. The chapter highlights the issue with websites like edenbrothers.com that have too many links, making it overwhelming and inefficient, as they include over 150 links in just one category and 1147 links from the homepage, which dilutes the importance of individual links.

Why is THIS the Perfect Shop Homepage for SEO? Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Have you ever wondered if a crammed shop homepage  is undermining your rankings? It is! Deleting half   of your homepage links can boost your sales by  up to 50% by the next link juice calculation   of your shop. Google’s link juice calculation  starts at the homepage; fewer links mean better   rankings for the linked categories and products.  You’ll learn how to delete unnecessary links and   funnel link juice exactly where it matters using  a lesser-known SEO component. In my 23 years of
• 00:30 - 01:00 doing SEO, I’ve watched countless online stores  undermine their own rankings by overloading their   homepages. Here’s how you can clean up your  shop homepage and become the hero of the year.  Almost all backlinks of an online store are aimed  at the domain, and hopefully your online store   homepage is set as the default page of your  domain. In that case, all that external link   juice is allocated to your homepage. Depending  on the amount and quality of your backlinks,   Google calculates a metric they used to call  PageRank. It is a metric from 0 to 10, indicating
• 01:00 - 01:30 how much link juice a domain has. Popular SEO  tools try to replicate that metric and call it,   for example, Authority Score in Semrush or Domain  Rating in Ahrefs. Every tool has its own metric,   but they are usually a number from 0 to 100. Take  that number as an estimation and don’t take it   too seriously. The link juice is distributed  in a pyramid form from the top, which is your   shop homepage, down to categories, subcategories,  sub-subcategories, and so on, all the way to your
• 01:30 - 02:00 products, filter pages, etc. Usually, URLs farther  from the homepage get less link juice, and links   in the menu get a lot of link juice because a menu  is displayed on every URL of an online store. We   already talked about link juice distribution; the  only thing you now need to remember is that lower   categories - especially those not displayed in  the menu - get just a fraction of the link juice,   and products get just a little bit of link  juice on average. But let’s start at the top:
• 02:00 - 02:30 Your top-level categories (so-called level  1 categories) are always in the menu,   and your menu is on the homepage. So if your  homepage has 100 links, each linked item gets   1% of the link juice. If you have 200 links, it  gets only 0.5%, and if you have 300 links on it,   each category gets only 0.33% of the link juice,  and so on. So, if you reduce the number of links
• 02:30 - 03:00 on your homepage, you strengthen every remaining  link. And the most important links on your   homepage are those pointing to categories. The  question is what deserves to stay on the homepage,   and what should be removed? Here’s the shocking  fact: usually, more than half of the links on   your homepage should be deleted, and by deleting  them, you double the strength of the remaining   links. This means that the rankings of the  remaining linked URLs will increase and bring   more sales. That sounds easy - and it is -  but most SEOs never do this important step
• 03:00 - 03:30 and instead waste their time optimizing vanity  metrics like core web vitals. So, how many links   on a homepage are too many? It depends. It depends  on the mentioned authority score of your online   store. If the online store has an authority score  of around 30, it can be considered a low-authority   domain. If the authority score is around 50,  it is a mid-authority domain, and everything   above 70 is considered a high-authority domain.  If you multiply the authority score by 5,
• 03:30 - 04:00 you get the recommended max internal link count.  For most low-authority domains it’s around 150   links, 250 for mid-authority domains, and 350 for  high-authority domains. Everything above that is   too much and every second invested in the homepage  cleanup will have a great impact. Here are a few   examples of online stores, their authority scores,  and the insane amount of links they have on their
• 04:00 - 04:30 homepage. Feel free to pause the video, take  a look at their homepages, and try to find out   where most of those links are pointing to. Just  remember, the Googlebot considers only HTML links   in the prerendered version of your homepage as  links and gives them link juice, calculating it   only for them. So, in PHP-based CMSes, all links  in forms with so-called PRG masks and JavaScript   links don’t count. In JavaScript framework–based  shops, only HTML links in the server-side rendered
• 04:30 - 05:00 version are considered; all others are left out.  Don’t ever use rel=nofollow links for internal   links, don’t mix them up with the nofollow meta  tag. Using the rel=follow on internal links won’t   save any linkjuice! Okay, let’s see which 7  parts of the homepage we can delete to boost   rankings and therefore the online store’s sales.  We have already covered this topic, so I’ll be
• 05:00 - 05:30 brief. In low-authority shops, only LVL1 and LVL2  categories should remain in the menu; everything   else needs to go. In mid-authority shops, the same  is the case, but some LVL3 exceptions can be made,   or just the most important LVL3 categories  should be put in the menu. Look at the menu   of edenbrothers.com, which has more than 150 links  in just one category of its menu. They have 1147   links from their homepage and consider everything  important, which can’t be true. This often happens
• 05:30 - 06:00 in high-authority shops too. They should stop at  LVL3 categories and maybe add some mega-important   LVL4 categories, and that’s it. But most don’t  listen. Take a look at diy.com, where they do   exactly that, and now look at their organic  traffic estimation graph. Impressive, isn’t it?   Want that too? Then do everything you are going  to learn in this video. Every link which can be
• 06:00 - 06:30 removed is a step towards growth, which you’ll  see in the next issue. If you see a video in the   shop header or a big slider with more than three  slides, you can be sure that this company has some   huge issues. Besides having a huge influence on  page speed, those headers don’t get many clicks,   don’t bring more sales, and most of the time, are  completely useless if you look at the numbers. But   if you ask department heads and category managers,  they’ll insist these are the most important things
• 06:30 - 07:00 in an online store. Your task is to remove it  completely or at least limit the maximum number of   slides to three and forbid using videos in it. If  you can manage to design them so images take less   space and load faster, do it. The main argument  is that fewer than 1% of visitors click on them,   and they almost never bring sales. Extensive  studies show that. If you don’t believe it,   do your own click tracking research.This might not  sound like much, but remember, every link counts,
• 07:00 - 07:30 especially in the next type of slider. Product  sliders are very popular because the online   store can rent them out to big brands, along with  homepage banners. Brands love to waste their money   on those. They love to insert as many products as  possible into them. Therefore, we often see arrows   on the left and right of product sliders,  sometimes hiding 20, 30, or even 50 linked   products. Guess what? Users click only on those  they see without clicking on the arrows, a really
• 07:30 - 08:00 small percentage of homepage visitors click on the  arrows. Everyone wastes money with them. Your job   is to get the arrows removed. By doing that, you  remove a huge amount of links for every product   slider, strengthening more important categories.  On average, you’ll find 4 product sliders,   sometimes even up to 10. And that’s because online  store managers also add their own useless product   sliders. The only slider that makes sense in every  shop is the bestseller product slider - especially
• 08:00 - 08:30 if the product name has a significant search  volume. Think of products that can be compared   in popularity to a PlayStation or iPhone, taking  into consideration the shop’s niche. Product   sliders also have another big issue. Product boxes  often have 2, 3, or even 4 links in them. Usually,   the image and the product title have a separate  link, then there’s an “add to cart” button, and
• 08:30 - 09:00 very frequently an “add to wishlist” heart icon.  The whole box should be one link to the product   page. That’s it. These are called unified product  boxes. So if a slider has 20 products and each   product box has 4 links, you have 80 links in just  one product slider. If you leave only 4 products   and create unified product boxes, you save your  homepage from 76 links for each product slider.   If you have 5 product sliders and do the same for  each, you save 380 links. It’s amazing how much
• 09:00 - 09:30 potential is hidden in just a few elements. Who  would have thought you can save so much more link   juice with this than by cleaning up a menu? Now  we are past half of the homepage, where research   shows fewer than 55% of users scroll to. For the  rest of the homepage, only 15% of users see it.
• 09:30 - 10:00 Usually, what you see next are either wide banners  or smaller groups of rectangular banners, again   mostly paid banners. Remove all unpaid banners,  especially those pointing to categories and   subcategories already present in the menu. You’ll  be left with discount banners and paid banners.   Optimize those images as much as possible to  improve loading times, and then hide those banner   links from Google. You can apply a PRG mask on PHP  -based shops, and in JavaScript framework - based
• 10:00 - 10:30 shops, just make them pure JavaScript links that  aren’t shown in the server-side rendering, only   in the client-side rendering. Next to be taken  care of, are the popular brand logos. It is very   popular to put a lot of brand logos linking brand  landing pages on the homepage. Do you hear the   slider alarm? It might be funny, but those sliders  can hide even more links than product sliders. Try
• 10:30 - 11:00 everything in your power to reduce the amount of  linked brand logos and make sure they have the   brand name in the ALT tag, and that the brand name  has a big search volume. Avoid any hover effects,   for example showing colored brand logos when  black and white logos are hovered, because   if CSS is used, those images are being loaded and  negatively influence loading times. Low-authority   shops should stick to no more than 6 brand logo  links, mid-authority shops to no more than 10,
• 11:00 - 11:30 and high-authority shops should definitely stop  at 20. Again, if they are listed in the menu,   they shouldn’t be here. If you can’t find a  compromise, mask them too. With masking, you can   achieve your desired link count every time; you  can’t overdo it. If you end up in discussions with   other stakeholders after you submit your change  request, don’t give the discussion up too early,   just because you can mask everything. Brand logos  will still influence loading times on PHP based
• 11:30 - 12:00 shops. Your homepage should also load as fast  as possible - ideally not slower than 3 seconds,   and in the worst cases not slower than 5  seconds. Lastly, optimizing your footer   links also plays a huge role. Let’s take a look  at them. The footer is like a bunch of unclosed   browser tabs you think you’ll need later but never  revisit - like a “watch later” trash can playlist.   First, delete all links that already appear  anywhere on the homepage, such as login,
• 12:00 - 12:30 register, my account, wishlist, and so on. Then  proceed with deleting all category and product   links. Then mask the payment provider and credit  card logos, as well as all social media links. So   you’re left only with legal links. Try to bundle  the legal links if possible and leave only the   ones required by law. Check this with the legal  department; they need to provide proof that every   link they say is necessary, truly is. Ask them to  show proof of the fee you’d have to pay a fine if
• 12:30 - 13:00 that link isn’t present. If they can’t provide  it, bundle them on a landing page called “legal”   and link to that page instead. Okay, now half  of your homepage should be gone - at least in   terms of links. You usually have some room left to  insert new links. That’s where the magic happens.   You might have heard about prefooters, a footer  before the footer, having several columns full of   links. But what should be linked from there,  and does that ugly thing really work? Yes,
• 13:00 - 13:30 it does. Many shops have made huge sales gains  by implementing it. Look at all your ranking   positions for transactional keywords, and filter  them to show only Top 11 to Top 20. Now sort them   by search volume. Download the list and delete  all category URLs already in the menu. You’ll   be left with a list of LVL3 and LVL4 categories  that just need a nudge to land in the Top 10 for   transactional keywords with significant search  volume. All you need to do is place a link in
• 13:30 - 14:00 the prefooter to those URLs using the keyword from  that report. The only adjustment should be to make   it plural. You can sort them and give the column  a name or call it just “trending searches” like   target.com does.So if you rank for “Wooden kitchen  door” in position 12 with your LVL4 category,   add a link in the prefooter with the anchor text  “wooden kitchen doors.” You can place 20 different
• 14:00 - 14:30 links in the beginning or up to 50 if you have  enough room. If you run out of categories,   add product pages that fit the same criteria for  product keywords. And if you still have room left,   add category-filter combinations if they’re set  to index. Again, do this only for transactional   keywords where you rank from 11 to 20 and  the search volume is high. You will see a   big spike in organic sales after Google’s link  juice calculation is done. That usually happens
• 14:30 - 15:00 no later than after a core update, which occurs  about every three months, but sometimes Google   initiates a separate link juice calculation for  your domain when it sees big changes. And what   is a big change if not a huge homepage cleanup?  If that happens, you will see results in just 2   weeks. You can confirm that by analyzing your  crawl stats—if you see an unusually big spike,   a link juice recalculation is very likely  happening. If you want to get similar e-commerce
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