Internal SEO structure - Optimal amount of internal links

This article came to me from an interesting chat with a Twitter contact, the question was: "What is the ideal number of internal ties in a home?"

What made everything even more confusing is that in the Google Webmaster Guidelines The answer to the question is: "Keep the links on a page to a reasonable number (less than 100)."

However several important sites such as the local newspaper Clarion, the NY Times and even the blog of Matt cutts (Google search engineer) have more than 100 links (more than 300 in the case of the NY Times) and none of them are "no follow".

This makes it clear that this aspect is not particularly important, since if there were penalties I do not think the NY Times or Matt Cutts would have the luxury, needless to say they have an excellent Pagerank Y Alexa Rank.

Where could there be a penalty?

This is pure speculation of mine, so do not take it as a "golden rule" but I believe that the only way that you will receive a penalty for an excess of links is if you link a hundred times to the same page of your website trying to do so. so gain extra relevance for different keywords without any real merit.

I always say that SEO is more art than scienceI do not mean that the Google algorithm is a work of art but that it is an ultra-precise work with rules in constant change according to possibly hundreds of factors that are not constant and to top it off confidential.

You could obviously test data from hundreds of pages to try to arrive at an answer to the eternal question of: How does Google rank? However, that would be like playing whack-a-mole, when the mole pops its head out and you are going to hit it, it hides its head again and comes out through another hole.

It is so advanced mathematics that we better forget about that aspect and concentrate on the real reason for the algorithm, giving users useful information, in this way instead of suffering by chasing it, we benefit from the investments made to improve it and let instead of being an enemy, he is a friend who helps us reach more people.

Doing SEO does not have a predefined recipe as if we were going to the supermarket to buy things, there is no list that says "100 internal links, 3 h1 tags, 5 external links, etc", but these measures vary in each case according to to the content of your page and if you are really contributing something with each element.

If there is such a list, there are so many factors both off-page and on-page that we will not be able to control them all and as I said, that list will be constantly changing.

Trying to follow "recipes" to position ourselves based on the amount of elements within our page is something characteristic of the extinct old search engines, an idea to get out of the head.

So what do I do to position myself?

I would consider following the last part of the Webmaster Guidelines that talks about site quality, it basically tells you not to be evil and to try to really contribute quality content.

If our links have a real reason for being and provide content that may be of interest to our visitor, I believe that we should not be governed by a rigid number, The ideal number of links on a page is the amount you need to display useful information to the visitor without making them dizzy.