I've been researching the question if several <a href=“#”>link</a>
links on one page have a bad impact on SEO and User Experience, for quite a while now but didn't really come to a conclusion.
This method is used when a site structure is ready from the start but content etc is missing. So you put up a frontpage with those links and extend the whole site step by step over time. So time after time those links will be removed with the actual link but it can take its time.
Lets say we have a big site with 50 pages and 5 pages have several of those "unready" links.
Lets clear the facts:
User experience: For the user it should be a really bad experience when they see a link for more information and expect to get these information but then just get linked to the top of the current page. If a page is full of such links I can imagine its frustrating and they will leave immediately.
Google's View: Their crawlers see the site structure right from the start and it should be more cost effective not to recalculate link juice etc with every update. And we know Google really cares about costs and effectiveness of their crawling.
But on the other hand, they also really care about the user experience and consider this as one major ranking factor.
So my question is: Does have several of those "not ready" links on one page, a bad impact on Google rankings?
I'm really interested how different webmasters see this topic.
<a href="#">
anchor doesn't reveal anything about the site structure?!href="#"
link is simply an in-page link (that goes nowhere) so there is no "juice flow". This serves no SEO purpose and only frustrates users (as you suggest). As Zistoloen suggests, "unready" links should not even be present on a public site.