International Site Links In Footer
-
We have several international sites and we have them linked in the footer of our main .com site . Should we add "nofollow" to these links? Our concern is that Google could see these sites as a network?
-
We did consider scrapping the .com site however it does rank really well for a lot of our key terms especially in the UK. So we really just use this as a landing page which seems to work well for now.
Thanks for the feedback guys its much appreciated
Matthew
-
I've just taken a look at the optical express site, assuming this is the site you're referring to.
If if it was my client I'd remove the nofollows from the flags in the footer. I don't see any reason why you'd be penalised for linking together a set of multinational domains for a brand, and removing the nofollows will help the link juice flow around the sites.
-
On the .com site we have all the links going to the international pages as follow.
On the various international sites we have links in the footer going pointing to the other sites in each country is it also ok to have these as follow?
Or could the interlinking of the sites cause a problem?
Would it be better for us to do what IKEA have done http://www.ikea.com/ and just have one way links coming from the .com to the all the sites and remove the footer links on the other sites which link to each other?
-
I agree with Matt here. You've got a legitimate relationship with these sites, and the presence of these links will be a benefit to your visitors who may want to other countries you serve.
You may even find it beneficial to raise the profile of these other sites as showing you have a global presence may increase confidence/trust in your brand. (As with all such things you'd want to do some testing to make sure as it'll depend on your audience).
Be careful creating international gateway pages. Done badly they can lead to all kinds of problems...
-
I wouldn't nofollow these links personally, that isn't what the nofollow tag was designed for.
The nofollow tag would stop google from passing link juice through the links, but it wouldn't stop google actually following the links and figuring out the sites are connected.
If you want users to see you have international sites (which makes complete sense), include the links. But, why not make them more prominent with a country selection page similar to ikea.com or apple.com? Don't be afraid of linking together a legitimate network of sites that sit under a single brand.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Dealing with broken internal links/404s. What's best practice?
I've just started working on a website that has generated lots (100s) of broken internal links. Essentially specific pages have been removed over time and nobody has been keeping an eye on what internal links might have been affected. Most of these are internal links that are embedded in content which hasn't been updated following the page's deletion. What's my best way to approach fixing these broken links? My plan is currently to redirect where appropriate (from a specific service page that doesn't exist to the overall service category maybe?) but there are lots of pages that don't have a similar or equivalent page. I presume I'll need to go through the content removing the links or replacing them where possible. My example is a specific staff member who no longer works there and is linked to from a category page, should i be redirecting from the old staff member and updating the anchor text, or just straight up replacing the whole thing to link to the right person? In most cases, these pages don't rank and I can't think of many that have any external websites linking to them. I'm over thinking all of this? Please help! 🙂
Technical SEO | | Adam_SEO_Learning0 -
Optimizing internal links or over-optimizing?
For a while I hated the look of the internal links page of Google Web Master Tools account for a certain site. With a total of 120+K pages, the top internal link was the one pointing to "FAQ". With around 1M links. That was due to the fact, on every single page, both the header and the footer where presenting 5 links to the most popular questions. The traffic of those FAQ pages is non-existent, the anchor text is not SEO interesting, and theoretically 1M useless internal links is detrimental for page juice flow. So I removed them. Replacing the anchor with javascript to keep the functionality. I actually left only 1 “pure” link to the FAQ page in the footer (site wide). And overnight, the internal links page of that GWT account disappeared. Blank, no links. Now... Mhhh... I feel like... Ops! Yes I am getting paranoid at the idea the sudden disappearance of 1M internal links was not appreciated by google bot. Anyone had similar experience? Could this be seen by google bot as over-optimizing and be penalized? Did I possibly triggered a manual review of the website removing 1M internal links? I remember Matt Cutts saying adding or removing 1M pages (pages) would trigger a flag at google spam team and lead to a manual review, but 1M internal links? Any idea?
Technical SEO | | max.favilli0 -
What is the best way to find missing alt tags on my site (site wide - not page by page)?
I am looking to find all the missing alt tags on my site at once. I have a FF extension that use to do it page by page, but my site is huge and that will take forever. Thanks!!
Technical SEO | | franchisesolutions1 -
We have duplicate page titles on the footer menu section of our site. Is this considered spammy?
When our new site was in development stages our digital agency convinced me that we should have duplicate menu links in the footer section of the site. The general justification being that the menu links are key word relevant. I have received opposing opinion from SEO advisers indicating that these duplicate menu links could be considered 'spammy'. I would appreciate some views on this please
Technical SEO | | saints0 -
Replacing a site map
We are in the process of changing our folder/url structure. Currently we have about 5 sitemaps submitted to Google. How is it best to deal with these site maps in terms of either (a) replacing the old URLs with the new ones in the site map and (b) what affect should we have if we removed the site map submission from the Google Webmaster Tools console. Basically we have in the region of 20,000 urls to redirect to the new format, and to update in the site map.
Technical SEO | | NeilTompkins0 -
Way to find how many sites within a given set link to a specific site?
Hi, Does anyone have an idea on how to determine how many sites within a list of 50 sites link to a specific site? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | SparkplugDigital0 -
What are the best Free Press release sites to gain free links
Hi I am trying to find some good free press release sites that allow you to have a link with your press release to help drive traffic to your site but all the ones that i have found do not have links within them. The only ones i can find where you can have links in them are paid ones. Does anyone use press release sites to gain links to their sites and if so could you let me know which ones they are please and how important you feel they are.
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860