Footer Links And Link Juice
-
I'm starting to learn about link juice and notice in GWMT > Traffic > Internal Links, that the list is in this order by the links counted on each page. Some are in the footer and some are in the header, with some being more important than others commercially i.e. /register
/privacy
/terms
/search
/sitemap
/disclaimer
/blog
/register
So I am wondering if I should add a 'no-follow' attribute to the footer links i.e. privacy, terms, disclaimer and leave the others as they are? Does this help retain link juice on each page where the links appear? Or am I missing the point all together?
This is my website: http://goo.gl/CN0e5
-
there are ways around it though such as obfuscated javascript linking and other methods of making a link unrecognized as a link
-
Fair point about disrupting the flow, I will leave the footer links as they are.
Some of the links are at the top of the page with Register being a call to action.
Thx.
-
Hmmmm.... a search form has been on my mind as I would track what people enter and then include them in my keyword research. Top tip!!
-
Thanks for the link, this video answered a few of my niggles about footer links!
-
Just to add to the consensus (although credit goes to multiple people on the thread) - PR-sculpting with nofollow on internal links no longer works, and it can be counter-productive. If these links are needed for users, don't worry about them, and don't disrupt PR flow through your site. Ultimately, you're only talking about a few pages, and @sprynewmedia is right - Google probably discounts footer links even internally (although we may no good way to measure this).
Be careful with links like "register", though, because sometimes they spin off URL variations, and you don't want those all indexed. In that case, you'd probably want to NOINDEX the target page - it just doesn't have any search value. I'm not seeing that link in your footer, though, so I'm not clear on what it does. I see this a lot with "login" links.
-
A no-follow, in terms of juice, would actually hurt your goals as the link still gets allocated the juice portion but it doesn't flow through. **Each no-follow link will siphon off a little juice. **
See http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=96569
The effects of navigational links are diminished somewhat as Google treats them differently compared to content links. To help solidify this, surround the footer with
<nav></nav>
tags.
Review: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links #5
Generally, remove any site wide links that aren't always needed and place them on page where users would like the details. For instance, use a search form instead of a link to the search page.
-
No this won't work. it's called pagerank sculpting and used to work but Google fixed that a couple of years ago by making the nofollow counts as a link and instead all you are doing is throwing away your page juice.
-
Hi there,
John Doherty did a really good whiteboard friday on this last year:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/smarter-internal-linking-whiteboard-friday
-
You could add a noindex if you think the privacy and disclaimer pages, etc, are not bringing any SEO value. Nofollow would block search engines from even spidering them. But a noindex would just stop it from showing up as an entrance/landing page in the SERPs.
I wouldn't say that it helps "retain link juice", but it might help you to show the search engines what your most important pages are.
An alternative would be to perhaps only link to some of those pages from your home page and not from every single page. Are there any pages that you think would be appropriate NOT to link to all those pages? If so, perhaps you can write a conditional statement in your code to only show those links on some pages and not others.
Scott O.
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
-
Refferal links
I have a site where I can pick up where my hits came from. So if somebody clicks from another website link to visit my website, I will then pick up from which website they came from and also which page they landed on. Will google penalize me for this and see this as paid advertising?
Link Building | | Heinwest0 -
Should I ask sites that link to me to update links that redirect?
I have found some links to my site that go through a single 301 redirect to get to my site. Should I contact these websites to ask them to update the link, or is that not worth the time?
Link Building | | RCF0 -
If i get link pointing to a specific page , will that link add up to the count of linking root domains too ?
If I create a fresh link pointing to specific page on my site, apart from adding a number to "page linking root domains" does it also add up to root domain linking ?
Link Building | | Techbate1 -
Link building for eCommerce
I have an engraving site where I am looking to increase traffic/ sales. We do local engraving services and sell engraved products via eCommerce. Perfectindesign.com It seems to me that locally I can't compete since most search terms are washed over with every local directory in and around the city that are selling there memberships. So I thought I could compete nationally via the 200 products we carry. I have used site explorer to go through my competitors links. My findings show that other then their twitter accounts and dmoz listing most everything else are paid links and lots of them. Keeping in mind I have 45 root domains with 411 links to my site. Three competitors links data. I probably shouldn't name them right? competitor #1 1k root with 13.9k links competitor # 2 147 root with 16k links competitor # 3 427 root with 28k Should I just start buying these links that range from $10-50 per link or is this a waste of time? Are these truly my competitors or am I comparing my tiny site to the major leagues?
Link Building | | YYV0 -
Which is better - A) links from multiple IP addresses, or B) Links with more associated social signals?
If you had to choose: A) 100 links contained in posts on 100 PR2* blogs, all on separate IP addresses, where none of the posts had associated social signals, or B) 100 links contained in posts within a single PR2* blog (single IP address), where each of the posts had 20 associated social signals, Which would you choose to increase your SERP performance? *I chose PR2 so that PageRank would not be a factor in the decision.
Link Building | | JohnScottDixon0 -
Neighborhood links
Hi, If my company offers carpet cleaning services, what neighborhood links partner I need to find. Can anybody list down the neighborhood. Thanks.
Link Building | | younus0 -
Should I unify my links?
Checking at opensiteexplorer.org I can see that: mydomain.com has has DA 26, linking root domains 1, total links 22 www.mydomain.com has DA 26, linking root domains 31, total links 89 The 22 links to the non-www domain come from the same site, which I would be able to convince to change to the www domain. Is it worth doing it? Will it add up to better DA? Thanks J PS: with only 32 root domains I think I have to do some serious link building...
Link Building | | TIBA0