Worthwhile to have global footer links?
-
About Us, FAQ, Site Map, Terms & Privacy - I know rarely viewed by users (at least on my website), so why keep in global footer across all pages, since one could argue it will dilute some link juice to more important pages?Why not just keep on homepage only? What is argument for having links to these pages across all pages on a site? Is there any SEO value?
-
Thanks for the great answers! This is very helpful for me.
-
good answer, Cyrus. I think the trust factor is probably more relevant than that 1% of users that may click. Other users will scroll and see those about, faq etc links and that ads trust and I think that is key why it makes sense to keep.
-
Hi Kristian,
Generally, we advise to keep links in useful places that add value for visitors, but prune links that are added solely for search engine manipulation.
Links like "About Us" and "privacy" can add a huge amount of trust to a website. Even if only 1% of your customers click there, it's a huge value add for those customers, in my opinion.
Yes, there is an issue of pagerank dilution, but unless you have dozens of links in this area it's usually a minimal concern. Search engines use so many other ranking factors, it's not a big deal.
That said, it's sometimes useful to combine links - both for ease of navigation and link consolidation. Like "Terms & Privacy" and "About Us" - which leads to a seperate pages about Team > Services > etc.
-
If your users are looking for that information in the footer those links should be there. To remove them in case it provides some ephemeral SEO benefit is looking at your website the wrong way around.
Billions of pages have those same links in those same spots. This includes some of the best, and best-ranking pages on the internet. I wouldn't worry.
If you are really concerned for some reason - here's an idea. Have a single link to covering all those topics going to a page called 'legal' or something. Link that page to the pages you used to have in the footer, but also to key pages in the site.
Mathematically that greatly reduces the problem of leaking pagerank. However I suspect that there are far far better uses of resources.
-
If its organized and really simple like the footer here in SEOMoz (check below), then keep it. If its just 5-6 footer links, I dont think it would take up a lot of link juice.
Plus footer links, (not considering SEO and Google) are indeed useful for site navigation purposes.
-
My footer links are well-organized, but few and they are About, FAQ, Sitemap, Terms & Privacy, which in theory are good for users to have access to throughout my site. However, if I know less than 5% of users click on those, that means very little user value. Will it help me from an SEO perspective to keep those footer links throughout my site or is the answer a clear "no" and I should only keep if the users benefit from having those links. Again, especially on my deeper pages with low PA, I am concerned about spreading the link juice on an already weak page....
-
Hi Kristian,
Global footer links are not anymore recommended to have on websites as they used to.
Aside from what you mentioned about link juice being passed on away from the more important pages, footer links are, most of the time, devalued by search engines and they also get low CTR.
Still, a lot of sites are still using them as resource for link placement.
So I guess it still depends if you have a really nice organization and layout as a footer (like this: http://shopper.cnet.com) then keep it. If not, it might just be a waste of your time.
Cheers!
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
-
What do you tell customers about outbound links?
Do you report outbound link profiles in an SEO audit? If so, what tools do you use to get outbound links? Moz doesn't seem to include this info in its crawl. What do you tell customers about the SEO value of outbound links? Thanks in advance for your SEO wisdom!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyKubrin0 -
Is it helpful for seo to have helpful links at the footer?
HI, suppose my homepage has good content but no external links to other sites for more info. and no helpful internal links in the footer to learn more. and my competition has 9 internal links in the footer which links to other pages on the site who has more SEO boost? I know the answer , does it really makes a difference or its minute?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SIMON-CULL1 -
Wrong titles in site links
Hello fellow marketers, I have found this weird thing with our website in the organic results. The sitelinks in the SERP shows wrong written text. As in grammatically incorrect text. My question is where does Google get the text from? It is not the page title as we can see it. kKsFv0X.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | auke18101 -
Unnatural links to your site—impacts links
I got message in my Google webmaster tool: Unnatural links to your site—impacts links Does anyone knows the difference between "Unnatural links to your site—impacts links" and "Unnatural links to your site" Thank you Sina
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SinaKashani0 -
Link Building
I have to develop a strategy for link building. The SEO guy I have been speaking with has started putting links on .edu sites etc . To me - this "stinks" of manipulating the search engines - which I know we will get stung by at some point. I hope this isn't standard practice - but I don't know what the best way to improve rankings in terms of links etc. We sell health products and are starting to put out 3-4 high quality articles per week. Ideas? Kind Regards Martin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear1 -
Internal Linking for better seo
On our site http://villasdiani.com we have a blog called Kenya news, which is a category where we regular post articles. I am always creating external links to the category Kenya news so as it would pass juice to the posts in it and the posts have back links to category. There are no internal links among posts in the category. As our main target is to rent beach villas and boutique hotels, each of that posts in the category Kenya news has only a link either to category with beach villas or to category with boutique hotels. My question is, if this is good practice?, is it just not too much links going to categories to beach villas and boutique hotels form the Kenya news?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rebeca1
Thank you very much for any thoughts Iris0 -
Dynamic Links vs Static Links
There are under 100 pages that we are trying to rank for and we'd like to flatten our site architecture to give them more link juice. One of the methods that is currently in place now is a widget that dynamically links to these pages based on page popularity...the list of links could change day to day. We are thinking of redesigning the page to become more static, as we believe it's better for link juice to flow to those pages reliably than dynamically. Before we do so, we need a second opinion.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RBA0 -
Value of Newspaper Comment Links
Although most newspaper comment sections are a no-follow zone, I have noticed that some comments I have posted with links end up being followed. The comments are participatory and the links relevant and even add to the conversation. My theory is that some comments are monitored and if the editors are looking to encourage discussion and don't feel like your spamming, why not take the no follow off. I do plan on doing some testing with poor, spammy comments on the same papers but am encouraged and would like to know what other people have found.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | phogan0