Internal links for a website

Question

I heard I have to keep internal links with relevant anchor texts on a website to just a few because too many internal links might "confuse" the bots. So generally I have to build DOfollow internal links just to DOindex pages. This way (at least in my case) I can keep internal links as few as possible.

But what about from visitors aspect, I cannot tell them something like "Go there and find something there" or "check navigation menu, click on some X subject and you will see it there" because this might result in an exit of websites so I would have to build internal links with good and clearly understandable anchor texts for visitors also. Is is OK if I put on that kind of internal links NOfollow attribute so I still meet this requirements about having "as few as possible" dofollow internal links (pointing to DOindex pages)?

Answer 1

Whomever told you this is wrong.

1. Only use nofollow on links that you don't trust. These links are usually provided by third parties (i.e. blog comments) and may be spammy. Otherwise, do not use nofollow. After all, Matt Cutts said linking to external sites can be a positive ranking factor.

2. Using nofollow on internal links is a bad idea. PageRank is still passed to those pages but is then discarded since the links are nofollow. This only hurts you and never helps you. This includes using nofollow on links to sign up forms, contact pages, etc. Those pages still have value to you as they can "pass" PR around your site as well as use internal links to your benefit. (Matt Cutts clearly states that using nofollow on internal links is a bad idea).

3. There is no such thing as too many internal links confusing the search engines. Although there is an upper limit to how many links should be on a page, it only is because search engines will only read and parse up to a certain amount of content before it stops. So unless you have over a hundred links or so don't try to minimize your internal links.

4. Internal links are a big tool for SEO. They count as "votes" and pass PR to your other internal pages. The anchor text used also is very helpful for your page's rankings.

Wikipedia is a great example of internal linking at its best. Every article links to every other article relevant to that topic at hand. The can be dozens of internal links on one page. Those links a big reason why Wikipedia ranks so well. (The fact that they have a lot of incoming links doesn't hurt, either).

Answer 2

In addition to John Conde's answer, I'd add the following points:

1. You should try and keep the anchor text consistent on links to the same page - this strengthens that term for the linked page.

2. The only time you should use nofollow on internal links is if they are to pages you really don't want indexed (say admin pages, sign-up, etc) or to "duplicated" content - for example if your site creates URLs for tags, sometimes you might want to exclude them from search results as the content is the same as the post page - however these should be backed up with noindex meta on the linked pages so direct entry doesn't index them either - these are the sort of links that could cause very large loops, so it's advisable to restrict them.