Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Service Location links in footer and on the service page - spamming or good practice?
-
We are are a managed IT services business so we try and target people searching for IT support in a number of key areas. We have created individual location pages (11) to localise our service in these specific areas.
We put these location links in the footer which went to the specified IT support pages respectively. Now we have created a general 'managed IT services' page and are thinking of linking to these specific pages on there as well as it makes sense to do it.
Would having these 11 links in the footer as well as on the 'managed IT services' page be spamming? or would it be good practice? If this is spamming, which linking location should hold preference.
Would appreciate the feedback
Thanks
Andy -
Thanks for the response Roman.
So the on-page internal links are a must and the footer links probably should be avoided.
This was my initial thought but i was swayed by our increase in rankings for some pages as well as a similar business who have done this method and rank highly in most support areas.
Gaining back links is next in our to do list!
Cheers
-
I definitely would not put these in the footer. Marie Haynes has a very good article on footer links that I normally reference: https://www.mariehaynes.com/footer-links-and-penalties/
Like Roman said, links in the footer don't offer much value anyway and put the site at risk for looking low-quality.
-
A link in the footer does not have the same value of a link in the body, check this article of Rand Fishkin about How Links in Headers, Footers, Content, and Navigation Can Impact SEO
Links in footers often get devalued
So if there's a link that you've got in your footer, but you don't have it in your primary navigation, whether that's on the side or the top, or in the content of the page, a link down here may not carry as much weight internally. In fact, sometimes it seems to carry almost no weight whatsoever other than just the indexing.
There's another good post about it Here is what Google says about footer links and penalties.
So what you can do?
Create 10 or 20 articles you can buy it or do it yourself, search for some blogs who accept guest post and submit your articles with this links to your site, so this links will give you traffic, relevance, and authority.
In summary, avoid footer links
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
-
Which are the best off-page SEO techniques for 2020?
I have just published an awesome website or blog, and i really worked hard keeping everything perfect. Do you think it’s enough? Having a perfect blog, website or business is just enough. i need readers for my blog, visitors to my website, and customers for my business. So, what to do?
Local Website Optimization | | boxinghunter0 -
I want to rank a national home page for a local keyword phrase
Hello - We are a nationally available brand based in Denver, CO. Our home page currently ranks #8 (used to be 5) for "real estate photography in Denver" -- I want to improve this ranking, but our home page is generalized and not geared toward Denver, CO but to all of our markets. I'm trying to troubleshoot this and have a few ideas.... I would love advice on the best route, or a different route altogether: Create a Denver-specific page -- _will that page compete with my home page that is already ranked in the top ten? _ Add the keyword phrase in the image alt attribute Add keyword phrase into the content - need to make sure that viewers realize we are national I already updated the meta description to say "real estate photography in Denver and beyond"
Local Website Optimization | | virtuance_photography1 -
One locations page, or multiple pages?
Hi, I represent a franchisor who does all marketing- including local seo- for our franchisees. I've read a lot about local SEO and understand the basics, but have some remaining questions. 1- If our typical territories are quite large and encompass more than one major city, should we create multiple location pages for the same franchise owner? I believe the answer should be yes from an SEO stand point, but the problem is that most of our franchisees naturally just have one business address (their home). Since PO boxes and virtual offices aren't the way to go, what's the best course of action? And when I say major cities, I'm really talking about major cities (and not just small towns/boroughs). Can they just use a friend's/relative's address? 2- There's a lot of info out there about "locations pages," but it's not really clear whether or not you should really just have ONE page for each location, or several pages with different content? For instance, it looks like a lot of businesses are creating just one, "home-page" looking landing page for their individual locations, with everything from services to testimonials on just that one page. Is this preferred over creating several different local pages for that one location? The latter is what we currently do. From the user stand-point, it looks like each franchise location has it's own "mini website" on our main website. For instance, a landing page optimized for the local business name, a local services page, a project/photo gallery page, local review page, etc. It seems like a lot less work just building one landing page for each location, but is the payoff the same? I'm torn between the two strategies- is it really worth the extra work (in terms of traffic + local ranking) to build out the individual pages for the one location? Thanks Moz Community!
Local Website Optimization | | kimberleymeloserpa0 -
Local Service pages guide?
There are a lots of Local landing pages guide on the internet. Is there any guide for Local service pages? How to create them, what to include?
Local Website Optimization | | Michael.Leonard0 -
Multilocation business, how can you rank for different categories in different locations with only branch pages?
Hello Mozzers, I am wondering how do you rank for categories locally where when you operate from multiple branches. Currently our eCommerce website has location pages for every category but I know that this is now classed as doorway pages and spammy so I am in the process of sorting out our site structure. I understand that the general format for having sites with multiple branches is to have a branch page per physical location and that's about it. Is there any more to this ? However, What confuses me though, is that if you offer all these services in all these branches, how are you going to rank for them locally if you don't have a specific page for each of them in that location? So for example - We rent Carpet cleaners , floor sanders, generators in each of our different branches. My site currently has a carpet cleaner hire <location>url , floor sander hire <location>url and a generator hire <location>url. Every branch has a url for each of my categories.</location></location></location> So if I was to get rid of all of my location category pages. How am I going to rank for these renting these products in different cities where our branches does without having specific location pages for them ? Is it just a case that google knows that because I have branch pages at locations x, y, x , then my carpet cleaner , floor sander and generator category pages will rank locally in those locations providing I have decent citations etc etc etc thanks
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC12
Pete0 -
Are there any suggestions when you completly redesign your web page keeping the same domain but change the host? I want it to go smoothly and want to avoid the rankings we already have including sub pages.
I am currently having our website completely redone by a design company. Are there any suggestions on this process as to not lose the rankings we currently have for our site? The domain will remain the same however we are planning on changing our host. We also have a good amount of sub domains that the web company will not be changing for us.
Local Website Optimization | | molchman0 -
Local Business Schema Markup on every page?
Hello, I have two questions..if someone could shed some light on the topic, I would be so very grateful! 1. I am still making my way through how schema is employed, and as I can tell, it is much more specific (and therefore relevant) in its details than using the data highlighter tool. Is this true? 2. Most of my clients' sites have a footer with the local business info included on every page of their site (address and phone). This said, I have been using the structured data markup helper to add local business schema to home page, and then including the footer markup in the footer file so that every page benefits from the local business markup. Is this incorrect to use it for every page? Also, I noticed that by just using the footer markup for the rest of the pages in the site, I am missing data that was included when I manually went through the index page (i.e. image, url, name of business). Could someone tell me if it is advisable and worth it to manually markup every page for the local business schema or if that should just be used for certain pages such as location, contact us, and/or index? Any tips or help would be greatly appreciated!!! Thanks
Local Website Optimization | | lfrazer0 -
Single Site For Multiple Locations Or Multiple Sites?
Hi, Sorry if this rambles on. There's a few details that kind of convolute this issue so I'll try and be as clear as possible. The site in question has been online for roughly 5 years. It's established with many local citations, does well in local SERPs (working on organic results currently), and represents a business with 2 locations in the same county. The domain is structured as location1brandname.com. The site was recently upgraded from a 6-10 page static HTML site with loads of duplicate content and poor structure to a nice, clean WordPress layout. Again, Google is cool with it, everything was 301'd properly, and our rankings haven't dropped (some have improved). Here's the tricky part: To properly optimize this site for our second location, I am basically building a second website within the original, but customized for our second location. It will be location1brandname.com/secondcity and the menu will be unique to second-city service pages, unique NAP on footer, etc. I will then update our local citations with this new URL and hopefully we'll start appearing higher in local SERPs for the second-city keywords that our main URL isn't currently optimized for. The issue I have is that our root domain has our first city location in the domain and that this might have some negative effect on ranking for the second URL. Conversely, starting on a brand new domain (secondcitybrandname.com) requires building an entire new site and being brand new. My hunch is that we'll be fine making root.com/secondcity that locations homepage and starting a new domain, while cleaner and compeltely separate from our other location, is too much work for not enough benefit. It seems like if they're the same company/brand, they should be on the same sitee. and we can use the root juice to help. Thoughts?
Local Website Optimization | | kirmeliux0