Confused on footer links (Which are best practices for footer links on other websites?)
-
Hello folks,
We are eCommerce web design and Development Company and we give do follow links of our website to every projects which we have done with specific keywords. So now the concern is we are seeing huge amount of back-links are being generated from single root domain for particular keyword in webmaster tools.
So what should be the best way to practice this? Should we give no follow attribute to it or can use our company logo with link?
-
Thanks guys..we are going to implement on our website..
-
Well to be completely on the safe side sure. But having a portfolio site is so extremely legitimate, transparent and common that I see no reason for worries. However, I can only speak for myself who is wearing a completely white hat and therefore sleeping sound at night;)
-
Yes Philipp B, but even with the portfolio onsite, i still recommend nofollowing those links to stick to google guidelines and play in the green area !
-
rikano's got a point there. This is why I suggest creating a portfolio or "our customers" page to place this links. There you fully disclose why links are there and you don't need to nofollow them. Links like these in the footer are bad for SEO and useless for users visiting the site.
-
Hello,
The best practice with these links is nofollowing them, unless you want to get hit by penguin or unnatural links penalty. Actually, footer links have no more value for SEO (or just litle value) and abusing them makes a clear pattern that will surely get you penalized.
I have dealt with several Google links penalties, and have recovered 80% of my clients. One thing i'm 100% sure of is: site-wide footer links when placed in multiple websites/domains will hit you soon or later. I know it's not that easy to convince you, but ask your self these questions, and u'll will surely nofollow those links:
1. Do those links add value to the page where they are placed ? (NO)
2. Would you click on a footer link, or give it trust ? (A very few people would)
3. Is that link editorial (the webmaster has placed it and he's happy to present it to his visitors to provide them with usefull resource) ? (No)
Just add rel=nofollow to that link, and start building some genuine links (guest posts, shares, broken links method) to get your site rank higher and earn more customers !
Hope it helps,regards
-
I think without nofollow is okay since linking to your clients and projects is legitimate and as long as you are transparent about why you link to them (because it's your portfolio).
-
It depends if you are looking to increase the overall authority of your website. If you are happy with the level at the moment, then yes put 'nofollow' attribute on. I would not say there was a big risk in having it 'followed' as it is an image and not keyword rich anchor text. I would also give the logo, img title/alts that are branded rather than keyword.
E.g.
Hope this helps
-
Thanks for your reply..
what do you suggest? company logo and name with "nofollow" attribute or without "nofollow" attribute?
-
Thanks Jonathan,
for your quick response and clearing our doubt. but still there is one query do we give our company logo without "nofollow" attribute? will it be advisable?
-
i vote for using an image in that situtation
For a good example for footer area links, look at Zappos and how they do theirs.
-
I would not put this in the footer, and definitely not with optimized anchor text. This will raise a red flag for google and does not add additional value to either you or your clients. If you do want to link to projects (which i think makes sense) it's better to have a portfolio page with these links. And as Jonathan suggested, use brand names or logo images to link to these projects.
-
Personally I would go with image or brand name anchor text. I read an article a while back about a UK Web company getting a manual spam penalty for having 'web design location' on all the websites they had developed. They change the anchor text to brand and filed for reconsideration and the penalty was lifted.
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
-
Website blog is hacked. Whats the best practice to remove bad urls
Hello So our site was hacked which created a few thousand spam URLs on our domain. We fixed the issue and changed all the spam urls now return 404. Google index shows a couple of thousand bad URLs. My question is- What's the fastest way to remove the URLs from google index. I created a site map with sof the bad urls and submitted to Google. I am hoping google will index them as they are in the sitemap and remove from the index, as they return 404. Any tools to get a full list of google index? ( search console downloads are limited to 1000 urls). A Moz site crawl gives larger list which includes URLs not in Google index too. Looking for a tool that can download results from a site: search. Any way to remove the URLs from the index in bulk? Removing them one by one will take forever. Any help or insight would be very appreciated.
Technical SEO | | ajiabs1 -
301 and 302 for same link
Just trying to find out if this may be the root of a slight traffic dip and also if we should be redirecting differently. We relaunched and did 301 redirects to the new site, initially. Then, we decided to change from http to https. Our HTTP status now looks like this when using the MozBar: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently – http://site.com/oldurl
Technical SEO | | MichaelEka
HTTP/1.1 302 Found – https://site.com/oldurl
HTTP/1.1 200 OK - https://site.com/new Should we be changing that 302 to a 301? Are we losing link equity due to this? Thanks.0 -
Google Links
I am assuming that the list presented by Google Webmaster tools (TRAFFIC | Links To Your Site) is the one that will actually be used by Google for indexing ? There seem to be quite a few links that there that should not be there. ie Assumed NOFOLLOW links. Am I working under an incorrect assumption that all links in webmaster tools are actually followed ?
Technical SEO | | blinkybill0 -
Cloaking? Best Practices Crawling Content Behind Login Box
Hi- I'm helping out a client, who publishes sale information (fashion sales etc.) In order for the client to view the sale details (date, percentage off etc.) they need to register for the site. If I allow google bot to crawl the content, (identify the user agent) but serve up a registration light box to anyone who isn't google would this be considered cloaking? Does anyone know what the best practice for this is? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, Nopadon
Technical SEO | | nopadon0 -
Language/country redirect best practice?
Hi, What is SEO best practice when it comes to redirecting users from www.domain.com to their specific language/country, let's say www.domain.com/de for Germany? From what I heard in on of the whiteboard fridays, it seems to be Javascript based on IP and browser language, and then set a cookie - correct? Or should we let our users manually select their language/country at the first visit? Any suggestion appreciated, thanks!
Technical SEO | | rtora0 -
Too many footer links?
Hi. We're working on http://www.gear-zone.co.uk/ at the moment, and I was wondering what's everyone's opinion on footer links. There's quite a lot on the page, and I was wondering if there might be a few too many. If so, what would be the best plan of action? Remove them altogether, stick them in an iframe or in a bit of JS so they can't be crawled? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | neooptic0 -
What should i do with the links for "Login", "Register", "My Trolley" links on every page.
My website ommrudraksha has 3 links on every page. 1. Login 2. Register 3. My trolley My doubt is i do not want to give any weightage to these links. does these links will be calculated when page links are calculated ? Should i remove these as links and place these as buttons ? ( with look a like of link visually ? )
Technical SEO | | Ommrudraksha0