Link Dilution
The thinning of value per link that happens when a page carries many outbound links, since the available equity gets divided among all of them.
Analogy Mental model
One cake split ten ways leaves everyone satisfied. Split a hundred ways and each person gets a crumb and a complaint.
In practice What you actually do
Count the links on your highest-value templates. Homepages, category pages, and sidebars accumulate them quietly over years, and every addition takes a share from everything else. Prune the ones nobody clicks and consolidate the ones that matter onto fewer, clearer paths.
Where people get burned Pitfalls
A sitewide footer with fifty links divides equity across every page on the site, which makes each one nearly worthless as a signal while still looking like effort.
This entry was written in English from the Chinese original, not machine-translated. Read the Chinese version →