What is this exactly? Whiteboard Friday warning about footer links.
-
Hi guys.
I've just been watching this whiteboard Friday. At 2.01 mins Rand mentions something about a penalty that Google gives for certain internal linking practices. I'm a little confused about it.
Something along the lines of... 'stuffing keyword rich anchor text in the footer and nav bar'
Does Rand mean repeating keyword rich anchor text in these areas?
Or just that it's stuffing by nature... because it's on every page of the site?
Hope that makes sense.
I've attached a screen shot of our footer. Could you let me know if this is bad form?
Thanks in advance
-
Understood, and thanks! Really appreciate your time Rand!
-
If they're keyword rich and manipulative in nature, then yes, they could get you penalized. If they're more "accidentally" keyword rich because that's what the pages are called, you're probably fine. For example, if Moz happened to have a page called "SEO Tools" and it was linked to in the footer of our site, no big deal. If, however, we had "SEO Tools" | "SEO Software" | "Check SEO Rankings" | "SEO Guide" | etc. that would be more likely to get us in trouble.
-
Hi Rand, thanks so much for getting back to me again.
I think we may be cross purposes here. Ha. Just to be clear I was just asking purely about internal links in the context of your WBF here. (2 mins specifically)
The basic question is: Can keyword anchor text in footer links (naturally) linking to other relevent pages on our site induce any kind of penalty? Due to the fact they are on every page does this look 'spammy' or intentionally manipulative?
(I feel I may have got the wrong end of the stick here tbh).
-
Header? It's pretty unusual to have or to get an external link in the header (most users assume, accurately, that headers are internal navigation).
If you're talking about internal links, no problem! Footers, headers, sidebar navs -- all are expected to have sitewide links. We're just talking about external links that can be perceived as link spam.
I also did a WB Friday video on this that should be going up in the next few weeks with more detail. Basic story in your case is, if the links are internal, and they're not spammy-anchor-text/intentionally manipulative/hidden from users/etc, you should be just fine.
-
Thank you Rand! Just a quick follow up if I may?
So should we worry about this in our header section also?
We know from Hotjar that our users find the header Nav useful to really fine tune their search for our products... Week view diaries, day per page diaries, 30, 20, 15 mins appointment diaries etc.
Seems like a crazy penalty (even if they have revoked it now). I mean we just added this for UX Blagged.
-
Yep! The sitewide link penalty, also commonly known as the footer link penalty or the "web design by" penalty is a pretty common (though not 100% universal) link dampener. Google mostly just ignores those links now, but they sometimes used to actively penalize for their presence (and may still in certain cases). My best advice is to instead link from your about page or another well-linked-to page on your site vs. linking from every page.
-
Great question, maybe a Mozzer will jump on for more clarification, but I believe Rand was referencing doing the "repeating footer links", as in having many footer links with exact anchor text or anything similar. A "sitewide link" that is simply just one link at the footer, often used by web development or design companies, will not get you a Google penalty. With that being sad, footer links, especially, sitewide ones, do not carry much value for increasing rankings. They can be good for referral traffic though. Hope this helps and best of success!
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
-
Links
Hi 64% of our links come from a .com website and only 30% from .co.uk. We only do business in the UK should I continue with the .com links as they are easier to source. Does this hurt my SEO efforts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
Internal links decrease dramatically
I have an unknown problem with my internal links. but after many searches on Moz community and other sites, I didn't find any answer. the question is: why homepage doesn't enough internal links like other pages? the homepage internal links decrease dramatically in 2 months but it doesn't happen to other pages in the same domain 6l6Bh D0bC1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | canadaoptimize0 -
Linking to URLs With Hash (#) in Them
How does link juice flow when linking to URLs with the hash tag in them? If I link to this page, which generates a pop-over on my homepage that gives info about my special offer, where will the link juice go to? homepage.com/#specialoffer Will the link juice go to the homepage? Will it go nowhere? Will it go to the hash URL above? I'd like to publish an annual/evergreen sort of offer that will generate lots of links. And instead of driving those links to homepage.com/offer, I was hoping to get that link juice to flow to the homepage, or maybe even a product page, instead. And just updating the pop over information each year as the offer changes. I've seen competitors do it this way but wanted to see what the community here things in terms of linking to URLs with the hash tag in them. Can also be a use case for using hash tags in URLs for tracking purposes maybe?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MiguelSalcido0 -
Using rel="nofollow" when link has an exact match anchor but the link does add value for the user
Hi all, I am wondering what peoples thoughts are on using rel="nofollow" for a link on a page like this http://askgramps.org/9203/a-bushel-of-wheat-great-value-than-bushel-of-goldThe anchor text is "Brigham Young" and the page it's pointing to's title is Brigham Young and it goes into more detail on who he is. So it is exact match. And as we know if this page has too much exact match anchor text it is likely to be considered "over-optimized". I guess one of my questions is how much is too much exact match or partial match anchor text? I have heard ratios tossed around like for every 10 links; 7 of them should not be targeted at all while 3 out of the 10 would be okay. I know it's all about being natural and creating value but using exact match or partial match anchors can definitely create value as they are almost always highly relevant. One reason that prompted my question is I have heard that this is something Penguin 3.0 is really going look at.On the example URL I gave I want to keep that particular link as is because I think it does add value to the user experience but then I used rel="nofollow" so it doesn't pass PageRank. Anyone see a problem with doing this and/or have a different idea? An important detail is that both sites are owned by the same organization. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ThridHour0 -
Link Juice + multiple links pointing to the same page
Scenario
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch
The website has a menu consisting of 4 links Home | Shoes | About Us | Contact Us Additionally within the body content we write about various shoe types. We create a link with the anchor text "Shoes" pointing to www.mydomain.co.uk/shoes In this simple example, we have 2 instances of the same link pointing to the same url location.
We have 4 unique links.
In total we have 5 on page links. Question
How many links would Google count as part of the link juice model?
How would the link juice be weighted in terms of percentages?
If changing the anchor text in the body content to say "fashion shoes" have a different impact? Any other advise or best practice would be appreciated. Thanks Mark0 -
What is the best way to link between all my portals?
Hi I own 12 different portals within gambling, they do more or less work and feel like this one, Casinotopplisten, what is the best way for me to link between all of them? Since there is alot going on in Google these days I havent linked between the sites at all, but i feel that to be a somewhat waste. So here is my three ideas so far, in ranked order: Add a menu at the topp right of the site, or footer, that links to the 10 different sites with different languages. The text link should then only be "Norwegian, Swedish, English etc.." Basiclly the same as about, but in addition linking to the "same page" in the other languages. As all pages have the same article set for startes this can be done. Dont do any linking between the sites and only link to the sites separately from our company blog/site.. Dont link at all. I should add that all of these sites are on different IPs with different domains and all in different languages. Hope someone can add their 2c on this one.. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MortenBratli0 -
Removing Canonical Links
We implemented rel=canonical as we decided to paginate our pages. We then ran some testing and on the whole pagination did not work out so we removed all on-page pagination. Now, internally when I click for example a link for Widgets I get the /widgets.php but searching through Google I get to /widgets.php?page=all . There are not redirects in place at the moment. The '?page=all' page has been rated 'A' by the SEOmoz tool under On Page Optimization reports and performs much better than the exact same page without the '?page=all' (the score dips to a 'D' grade) so need to tread carefully so we don't lose the link value. Can anyone advise us on the best way forward? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jannkuzel0 -
Dark Matter Links
From 2007 - 2004 I worked for Sprint in several positions with my last one being a Corporate Account Manager for fortune 1000 customers. In 2004 I left Sprint after the Nextel merger and created an eCommerce site called thesprintstore.net as a Sprint Nextel preferred partner. I used my inner working knowledge of Sprint to my wonderful advantage and began making 3x my original salary. My desire for more business turned to greed and I began leaking information that consumers loved i.e. phone release dates, price points, warehouse stock levels and tricks of the trade. This garnered me thousands of links from big sites (had no idea at the time) and eventually my site was issued a Cease and Desist order from Sprint's Corporate Headquarters. I recently realized one evening that I had a GEM of a domain with powerful backlinks that I could redirect to my current site TECHeGO.com [staff removed hyperlink]. (Some of the back links are from Engaget, Engaget Mobile, Rimmarkable and even one from Sprint.) The redirection has been in place for months now and I have confirmed that all that sweet Link Nectar is flowing through! I have found it interesting, however, that my back link and referral domain count have never increased leading me to believe that in doing a 301 Redirect existing links become what can only be described as 'Dark Matter Links' i.e. the links are there, simply invisible. Dark Matter Definition: dark matter is matter that is inferred to exist from gravitational effects on visible matter and background radiation, but is undetectable by emitted or scatteredelectromagnetic radiation. Dark Matter Links: dark matter links are visible links that have passed through a 301 redirect which are now inferred to exist but are no longer visible by crawlers? Is there a better definition that could be applied to the term 'Dark Matter Links'?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TECHeGO1