What are Boilerplate Links? 🔗

When auditing large websites with thousands of pages, one recurring issue is cluttered links in the headers and footers.

🤔 Why Do Websites Do This?

Linking to important pages from the header and footer is often seen as a smart strategy to consolidate ranking signals for those pages.
But when a site has thousands of pages, deciding which pages are truly important becomes tricky.
This often results in headers and footers being overloaded with internal links.

🔍 How Google Handles Boilerplate Links?

Google treats boilerplate links differently from those in the main content.
Koray Tugberk GÜBÜR's framework highlights the concept of reducing the "cost of retrieval" to improve efficiency.

• ✅ Instead of cluttering headers and footers, link to important pages contextually within the main content to:
  • 🧭 Help crawlers and readers better understand the context of the linked pages.
  • 📈 Consolidate ranking signals more effectively.