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Does it have any sense to have a link to comments for each post in a list (e.g. category page)? If so, does it have any impact on SEO?

Here's an example of a posts list page snippet:

<span>
    <a href="author_name.html">Author name</a>
    <a href="2012-03-03.html">Date published</a>
    <a href="some_category.html">Some category</a>
    <a href="...">Comments</a></i></span>
<p>The excerpt ...</p>

I'm guessing that it would be better not to use the links to comments because they're making Google to index "comments" as a relevant keyword in my site.

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"Comments" is such a common word used on web sites that your website isn't even going to register on scale of top websites that use it.

As long as Googlebot can get to all the pages on your site by following links, your internal link structure is pretty much "good enough". The days of being able to tweak your internal links for better ranking are pretty much over.

It isn't going to matter to Googlebot if you have a comments link or not. Internal anchor text doesn't count for much at all anymore. Googlebot will be able to find the permalink through the post title, or the comments link. It doesn't matter if you include it or not. In fact, if your comments link goes the same place as the post title link, then Googlebot will ignore the the comments link anyway. Googlebot only counts the first link for Pagerank and anchor text purposes and ignores all duplicates on the page.

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  • This makes much more sense for me. Just for clarify: The "comments" links are included many times all along the web site (home page, category pages, tag pages), so it becomes one of the most important words in my site. Could't this hurt SEO? – Manolo Nov 19 '14 at 10:20
  • So many other sites do so that Google has to be able to deal with it. – Stephen Ostermiller♦ Nov 19 '14 at 11:20
  • Mmmh... all right. So the answer would be: it shouldn't hurt SEO. Isn't it? – Manolo Nov 19 '14 at 11:37
  • Other sites that use "comments" links are ranking well, so it shouldn't hurt you either. – Stephen Ostermiller♦ Nov 19 '14 at 11:39
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When you add rel="nofollow" to these links Google will ignore them. This will also reduce the importance of the key word "comment(s)"

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  • I read that rel=nofollow just should be added to not trusted links since the last Google's algorithm update. – Manolo Nov 17 '14 at 19:50
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    It should also be added to links Google should not really care about. – BrainStone Nov 17 '14 at 21:22
  • But the proportional link juice will be lost... Wouldn't be better to remove those links? – Manolo Nov 17 '14 at 21:51
  • Assuming I'm not completly misinformed Google will treat these links as no existing. It actually follows this attribute. It should have about the same effect as removing the link. – BrainStone Nov 17 '14 at 21:55
  • I don't recommend nofollow on internal links. In this case the "comments" link likely goes to the same place as the post title. You want Googlebot to follow the post title link. However, if you use nofollow on one of the two, Googlebot will ignore them both. Google's logic: if you say we can't trust the link in one place, why should we trust it in the other? – Stephen Ostermiller♦ Nov 18 '14 at 2:38

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