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What if a particular homepage contains a huge number of links. Is it good / bad for SEO ?
What is the process one should follow to optimize this.. As you know, Home pages generally are the entry point for a website. and the links on this will be more than any recommended upperlimit.. I've heard something that a page shouldn't have more than 150 links on it.
Google did once recommend no more than 100 links on a page, but this was due to the crawler only indexeing 101 kbs of a page. This recommendation however dates back 8 or so years ago and the web and web sites have changed in that time where you often have many links on a page, so Google no longer recommends this.
A video from Matt Cutts at Google explains this : Does Google still recommend 100 links or fewer per page?
So create as many links on your home page, or other pages that will create the correct user experience for your site.
There is no definitive maximum number of links allowed on a page for SEO but there is a rule of thumb. Google has said in the past that 100 links should be the maximum number of links on a page. They did not say they stop following them at that point or that there were other SEO implications. Their reasoning is that a page with more links than that is difficult to use and makes for a bad end user experience.
Another factor that comes into play is Google will only parse up to a limited amount of data before it stops. If you have too many links on your page, Google may stop parsing the page before it gets to quality content and/or content you want indexed.
If you find that a page will have a large number of links on it then you probably set SEO aside and should ask yourself, "is there a better way to do this? Is this the best user experience I can provide"?
I would suggest reading:
http://moz.com/blog/how-many-links-is-too-many
It is a bit older but good. It also echos the answers above. However, it also adds the point that the juice passed from a page to another is divided by the number of links and that is an important consideration.
As well, Google seems to have two views on pages that contain a larger number of links. One is that a robust link list can be perceived as having value and authority, however, too many can be seen as lower value and less authoritative. Considering that too many link sites were created to usurp search results, I would not want to fall into that category. Be that as it may, I guess it depends on what your site is doing. There are plenty of sites that are primarily link sites that fall within Google's good graces.
Good Luck!
