Are backlinks in the form of Footer or Sitewide links safe?

[mzakaria]

Hi There!

Some of our competitors are using sitewide links in the header, footer or sidebar…is it ok to use these type of backlinks to increase overall backlinks. The site-wide links increase backlinks dramatically.

Thanks

Malik Zakaria

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi,

No, there is no good reason to do this. For linking purposes, this will do absolutely nothing for you. Sitewide and Footer links are mostly just ignored or devalued by Google, but could end up with you looking spammy.

Rand actually did a Whiteboard Friday about this very subject last year.

https://moz.com/blog/links-headers-footers-navigation-impact-seo

-Andy

[nhhernandez]

Hello there, I asked the same question here and we've followed this advice:

"This is a common issue and if you do a Google search about this issue, you will find a lot of discussion about this with many kind of opinions. Sitewide footer links are generally not a safe idea. Many people recommend making those links nofollow.

One solution could be to make the sitewide links nofollow, except the link in your customers frontpage footer. Then you'll get the link juice from the front page, but no penalty from sitewide links."