Help! Someone's inserted my link in the footer of another site!
-
There's a site in my industry where (I'm guessing on flawed SEO advice) all of their pages contain footer links to rival sites – with each page containing a different set of links.
One page has a link to my site, which I've just found out from GWT as the link now produces a 404.
Should I
a) ignore it?
b) ask them to replace it with a live link from my site (their site's highly relevant to mine)? or
c) ask them to remove it altogether as no-one wants footer links? -
Ah I think this answers my question:
....John Mueller of Google did confirm at Google Webmaster Forum that, if a page is made 404 or 410, links to such a page are not counted by Google.
-
Thanks for the input.
I agree they look spammy. I'm also going by this thread here:
http://moz.com/community/q/footer-link-2Qu: the single footer link to my site produces a 404 Not Found (it was for a real estate listing that we deleted months ago).
Do I still need to take action or can I simply ignore? -
If you are referring to the anchor text links at the bottom I'd get it removed. They look extremely spammy and is probably doing you no good whatsoever.
Ask them to remove the link but if they refuse to or you don't get a response, use the disavow file.
-
Now why didn't I think of that?
However, my question remains: You would take the link despite its being in a footer? -
Or you could just use your htaccess file to 301 redirect their broken link to whatever page on your site you want it to go to.
-
Footer link, though? Isn't that a no-no?
-
I would recommend what you
ve mentioned under point b) ... I cant see why you should not take a little advantage from such a link?! As long as this site that gives you this link is not a "bad" one...
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
-
JPG's listed as the Top Pages in Moz
In Moz, under Links, my Top Pages are all .jpg's. Is this unusual? Should I change the names of those jpg's and redirect the jpgs listed on the Top Pages to the html page it can be found on?
Link Building | | Boweb
Like instead of people linking to this page: https://www.freequilt.com/cat-and-the-fiddle.html it looks like from the Top Pages that people are linking directly to this image: https://www.freequilt.com/images/nursery-rhyme-series/cat-and-the-fiddle/moona.jpg
My thoughts are to rename that image so no one is linking to it, and redirect the image to the html page. Would I be hurting my Google ranking any by doing so?1 -
When we use 'link:' for who get the link, how come google show us the same domain as a link.
the search result show the domain of its own. what is is? and is it meaningful as a link?
Link Building | | onedaykorea0 -
Help on Link Building
Hi, Recently I've dropped two points on my Root Domain Authority for smallhope.com. Not really sure why. I've done as much on page optimisation that I can think of, but what I would really like some help on is Link Building. If this was your domain what would you do specifically and start link building. I've read a ton of stuff but I just dont seem to know a way to begin. Can you offer me any advice? I've dropped 20% in traffic in the last 8 months. Hope you can help, Adam
Link Building | | NaescentAdam0 -
Networking sites / paid links
A national networking company charges its members, say, a few of hundred pounds to become part of their network, which involves offline networking events and online in forums and a directory. All the links of the directory and forum sigs etc are all do-follow. While it's not just a directory, how beneficial a link is this likely to be? The site itself has a DA of 60 and a PR rank of 4. 1k likes on their cnnected FB page and 21 likes on the G+. At the networking meetings they tell new recruits that being a member gives them a very valuable backlink and everytime they participate in the forums they get another do follow backlink. Ive checked and they are dofollow. Is this likely to be a great value link?
Link Building | | littlesthobo0 -
Footer Links when is it to much?
Hi, so iv been searching around the internet, and I have come up with the general consensus that footer links that link to external sites are bad? Can anyone verify this statement? Also when do Footer links become spammy, and what is your opinion on site wide footer links? I have also read that if you are a bigger brand, that you most likely would be able to get away with some more things(such as, linking to external sites) thanks for your help. Peter
Link Building | | PeterRota0 -
Is there a tool to find out our website's link in some other website?
sometimes we know our site link is there on a site but the site is so big its hard to search manually. Is there any tool which can crawl the whole site and find the page having our site link ? though I know about OSE, and we can also see backlinks from webmaster tool. But still if you know any tool where instead of seeing the whole back link profile, we can add a specific url and see our site link in that url.
Link Building | | Personnel_Concept0 -
SEOs and web developers frequently leave links to their site in the footer of their clients' sites. Does this negatively impact the site with the links?
Does this provide any SEO value to the receiving site? Has anyone experienced problems doing this?
Link Building | | KatMouse2 -
Links per Site vs. Domain Authority
Here's a quaint one: 1. Posting follow links on another site helps increase one's domain authority. 2. If I post to the same site/forum with followed links each week, would my domain authority reap a domain authority increase benefit? In short, is there any domain authority benefit to continually post links to a site to which I've already posted a follow link?
Link Building | | GreenCupboards0