How many links is too many for ONE article?

So one of my writers just sent me an article about a particular history of a sport, its 750 words and has 9 links throughout it as references. Is that too many or?

cheekykent said:

So one of my writers just sent me an article about a particular history of a sport, its 750 words and has 9 links throughout it as references. Is that too many or?

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That is horrible.

cheekykent said:

So one of my writers just sent me an article about a particular history of a sport, its 750 words and has 9 links throughout it as references. Is that too many or?

Click to expand...

BassTrackerBoats said:

That is horrible.

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For some weird reason, I started calculating the keyword density and typing out about 1-3% density. Then I pressed F5 and saw BTB's answer.

And yes, that is rather terrible.

And I'm getting too tired, better got to bed.

BassTrackerBoats said:

That is horrible.

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whats the optimal number for an article that length?

cheekykent said:

whats the optimal number for an article that length?

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I might be wrong but I think he was being sarcastic.

789 is too many, however I only ever use one per article. I have had people do work for me who have used two, which I do not really like, but id#f they had put more than two in, I certainly would not use them again, as they are obviously clueless.

That's about 1 link for every 3 lines. Can they write only 2 sentences per reference page? If that article even makes sense, put them under the article and label it as references and nofollow em all. Google won't punish your site for having nofollow outbound links. They count it like trackbacks.

i think the guy did confusion with writting for wikipedia

Is there a reason that those references need to be links?

The point of references and citations in respect to authority, copywrite and plagiarism is to 1) let your reader know that you aren't just making things up and letting them know how they can find the source material you referenced, and 2) give credit to the original author of the information you're using. Those are the primary reasons for needing to cite your sources, but that doesn't mean the citations need to be formatted as links.

I don't know if everyone will agree with this, but, aside from any SEO benefit or detriment, the only thing a hyperlink to an external source is good for is to offer your traffic a reason and easy method to leave your site.

The only reasons I can see for linking to any reference, actually the only reason for any kind of link is 1) the reference is another one of your own pages or websites that you want to pass link juice to or one that you want the traffic to visit, 2) the site you're linking to has such high authority that you'll gain some SEO benefit from having an outbound link to it, or 3) the original source has some requirement or agreement for you to include a link to them (in which case a no-follow link would be best for you). If none of those apply then I would just provide the minimum info required for a citation and not make it a link, if possible I wouldn't even use a non linked web address format in the text.

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:ranger: Actually, do you even need the references at all? For authoritive and scholarly work citations are an absolute requirement, but for more casual writing it isn't nearly as important.

I see no wrong in that from an seo point, look at sites like wikipedia.
but saying that from a users view thats horrible do these links point to the same url more than once as only the first link counts.

Not that big of a deal dude. As long as the links are actually accurate, like they actually got the info stated from the site stated, I don't see a whole lot of harm done. As someone who questions everything, I appreciate the hell outta reference links that are accurate. However, if the article is to promote any other products at all, drop the other links.

7/8 links in one article? Yes i'd use it if its 7500 words article. But not in 750 words. In that kind of length I'd use 1/2 links to authority sites such as wikipedia, searchenginejournal etc.. and ONE link to my money site.

i would suggest no more then 2 links per article