Other sites linking to our site through sitewide footers
-
Hello,
We have other sites linking to our site through images in sitewide footers, resulting in a link from every page of each site. Those sites are not owned by us and they decided to link to us on their own. They usually link to us as their "sponsor" or "partner", sponsor as in sponsor of some event and partner as in we sometimes work together on joint initiatives.
I've searched Moz forum and other articles, but haven't been able to find an answer to this question. We'd like to make sure Google doesn't consider it to be spammy and we don't get any sort of penalty. Should we ask them not to link to us through those images in a sitewide footer or ask them to simply add "nofollow"? We don't want to remove those links if they are not considered to be harmful and removing them will hurt our DA/PA.
-
Hi Marynau
It's considered bad practice to link to other sites through footers. It results in 100s and often 1000s of links coming to you from one site which could be considered spammy. You probably won't get a manual penalty but there may be an algorithmic one if it happens too frequently from a number of different sites.
Check the spam score of the site linking to you - use the MOZ bar - if they are a sponsor then they are likely to be OK. Then politely ask them to link to you once from an 'Our Sponsors' page or just one link from the home page (as it's likely to have a higher PA - page authority)
I hope that helps,
Regards
Nigel
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
-
I am getting automatic spam links to my site, how can I remove them?
Hello, I need assistance, recently I noticed a huge traffic drop from my blog, lost all the rankings in SERP. I got to know that it's Google OCT Spam Update mainly it's about spamming and black hat techniques. But I haven't done any spammy practices or Black HAT SEO. I pay good amount of $ a month to freelancing content writers and don't make any spam backlinks. My site is : tcmguide.com Checked my site in search console and noticed that I had out of no where got 13000+ links from different dirty sites, as I have never tried to building those links in my life. 13 382 links.jpg I tried to export and Disavow this but via Export I got access to 1000 only and can't find these links in MOZ. Moz is showing other links, can any one help me out to recover my traffic and If my site is hit with Spam Update, how can I recover from it. Please help me felling pretty demotivated and stressed
Link Building | | dsdfsdfdfdfvg330 -
I am looking for a software to keep track of the back links or link building
Hi Guys, I am very new hear. I just joined. I have a few websites that I need to manage. I am looking for a software that will allow me to manually add the links that I have been able to acquire. It would also be a bonus if it could search for the links to my site and to see if its still active. Because I have a freelancer working a few hours a week on link building and I need to keep track of the links. I am looking for something simple and good. Any suggestions? By the way, I used Raven Tools many years ago, and it had this feature. But since joining Moz, I don't want to be paying for 2 subscriptions. And I don't know if Raven still has this feature. Your suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you. Ryan
Link Building | | RyanNewman0 -
Links from coupon sites
Hi All, I post coupons on coupon sites a month ago and when I checked backlinks of my website I saw approx 1000 links coming from coupon sites on my Brand Name. IMO it is quite natural please share your views. *All the big brands listed on that coupon sites e.g amazon, dell etc Thanks
Link Building | | Alick3001 -
When link building yourself where would you advise are the best places to add links?
Hi I am not having much success with SEO companies so am looking at link building and doing SEO myself. Where would you advise are the best places to add links? Also is it better to add links to specific pages or just to the home page? Thanks in advance
Link Building | | Briggzy0 -
Should I ask sites that link to me to update links that redirect?
I have found some links to my site that go through a single 301 redirect to get to my site. Should I contact these websites to ask them to update the link, or is that not worth the time?
Link Building | | RCF0 -
30,746 Links from One Site to Our Site
I learned this morning in our Google Webmaster Account about a website has 30,746 links to our website. Both our website and their site present information related to plastic materials, so in essence they complement one another. However, is having that massive amount of links from one site to ours a bad thing and should we use Google Disavow? Also, they have a PR3 while our site is PR5 (not sure if that matters much).
Link Building | | Prospector-Plastics0 -
Is it ok for a web design company to have a branded footer link on their client's sites?
Now I know that in general footer links to your site from another site are bad...this is because they are very often spammy...however I like to think that Google is pretty smart and I am of the opinion that a web design company should be able to link back to their own site. Here's why: If a visitor comes across a site that they love the design of, and they want a new website built...why shouldn't they be able to click through to the web designers site? (as long as the client is happy to link to it of course) I also feel that if there are a whole bunch of high authority/pagerank websites have been designed by a web design company and they therefore have a footer link pointing to them, it's probably a pretty good sign that they're a good web designer. Is it not? In saying this I think that the link anchor text should be branded rather than keywords. For example I usually write "Web Design by Static Shift" I'm interested to hear people's thoughts. Am I being blinded by my bias? Thoughts aside, and onto the facts...what are people's experiences with footer links for a web design company. Do they help or hinder?
Link Building | | Static_Shift3 -
First 100 links for every new site?
Is there a rule of thumb I am unaware of or a place that others start to get links for every new site they create, something like the "first 100 links for every new site" regardless of content? I know you always start building links around what the content of your site is about, but does anyone have a rule of thumb that you always start with links from certain sites regardless of the site content. For example for a local company: Google Places, Bing Local, Linkedin, Facebook, Localeze etc. etc. I just want to make sure I am taking quality first steps for every site I start and was wondering if anyone could give me some good rules of thumb or resources.
Link Building | | photoseo10