Link Building with links in footer of Word Press Themes- Is This BLack Hat??
-
I See lots of free word press themes with links in footer like Kids Headphones | Colombia Classifieds | Broadway Tickets Is this a valid white hat link building method? What if the theme looked like a particular industry and the links related to the industry would that be better?
-
Hi Joel,
you might want to consider reading questions more carefully before you reply.
This has nothing to do with removing links but building an distributing a theme with links in it!
-
If you put a base64 obfuscated link in the footer of your WordPress then I'll hunt you down and gut you like a fish ಠ_ಠ
The problem with those footer links is that they look spammy to both users and to search engines. Your theme could end up on all manner of sites with links to things they're irrelevant too, even if you try and skin the theme to be relevant.
Ultimately it's no longer a good way of building links, not least of all because people have such a huge choice of themes now even exceptional ones don't find many homes. Plus, even if you make a condition of using the theme, a lot of people are going to remove them.
As Riggz said it would only really not look bad if you were a design company, but it's been abused so much in the past I would think that they're almost entirely discounted by search engines.
-
I've actually wondered the same thing... In that particular example, it seems they are injecting a wide variety of keywords into the footer, and it looks kind of fishy.
In general the only link I put in the footer (beside quick links to less visited areas of the website) would be credit for the web company in some way, "Site by X", 'Website Design by X", "Hosted on X CMS" (only using 1 of these per site).
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
-
Getting Spam Links
Hi There, I am planning to Disavow one spam domain but when check Google cache it shows my client domain name. So if I disavow this spam domain which link Google considered? Please help me. Thanks Satla
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TrulyTravel0 -
Low quality links
Hi I have found a lot of links from a majestic report (not found on moz open site explorer). inwhich I have found lots of links from 2010 and possibly earlier which either I can't get hold of the webmaster. Is a disavow the right way to go if I can't get them removed myself? Also I have noticed that there are a lot of free directories listing new pages from our site and I am concerned Google are going to find these. I surpose there is nothing I can do about this, does anyone have any recommendations.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Custom Wordpress Theme - HTML5 Outline - H1 display: none
We are using a custom wordpress theme for to help us optimize our webpages. We're trying to structure the webpages so that things are as optimized as possible for our clients. I was wondering if we could get some feedback on whether or not we using the correct page structure across the site. We have set a no-display class on the H1 so that the page title wouldn’t mess up the layout and is placed above the logo and have placed other header tags on the different page sections and added in keyword variations to avoid having untitled sections. Is equal to ? Is there a better way to structure this content? Are we not doing something that we should be or overdoing anything? I guess my main question is what would be the best way to use HTML5 to structure this website?http://estheticdentistry.net
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | projectassistant0 -
Vetting Link Opportunties that are Penguin Safe
I am looking to go after sites that are, and will never be, affected by Penguin/Panda updates. Is there a tool or a general rule of thumb on how to avoid such sites? Is there a method anyone is currently using to get good natural links post Penguin 2.0?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | dsinger0 -
Sure, but what about non-keyword rich anchor text links?
Could spammy non-keyword rich anchor text liks help your website rank? Of course, there's been a lot of discussion around Google's update of its link scheme. Specifically, they target press releases with do-follow links on keyword-rich anchor text and "Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links". Well, that leaves the question unanswered, what if you're doing these spammy linking techniques, but on non-keyword rich anchor text, such as "click here", "find information", and "click here". Will you still get smacked down by Google then? Given that links on non-keyword anchor text can still help increase domain authority, it seems like Google left a door open here for large scale publication of a certain class of spammy links that can still assist rank, no? Also, in answering, please distinguish between best practice, and effective. For instance, purchasing links isn't a good practice, but it can still be an effective technique. While spammy links on non-keyword rich anchor text is certainly not a good practice, is it nonetheless effective?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ExploreConsulting0 -
Links via scraped / cloned content
Just been looking at some backlinks on a site - a good proportion of them are via Scraped wikipedia links or sites with similar directories to those found on DMOZ (just they have different names). To be honest, many of these sites look pretty dodgy to me, but if they're doing illegal stuff there's absolutely no way I'll be able to get links removed. Should I just sit and watch the backlinks increase from these questionable sources, or report the sites to Google, or do something else? Advice please.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Links In Blog Posts: 1 Paragraph VS. Full Article
Hey guys, I've been using an article network to post unique articles (not spun). Been posting 1 paragraph articles with 1 text link. Just wondering what the main difference would be if I were to post a full article with 2 or 3 text links vs 1 paragraph with 1 text link, besides the fact that you get more links and save more time writing only 1 paragraph. Will the full article with 3 backlinks improve keyword ranks more or not by much? Cheers!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | upick-1623910 -
NYT article on JC Penny's black hat campaign
Saw this article on JC Penny receiving a 'manual adjustment' to drop their rankings by 50+ spots: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13search.html Curious what you guys think they did wrong, and whether or not you are aware of their SEO firm SearchDex? I mean, was it a simple case of low-quality spam links or was there more to it? Anyone study them in OpenSiteExplorer?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | scanlin0