How And/Or If To Prune Footer Links
-
Hi,
I have a site with a site-wide footer that currently has 28 internal links.The footer terms are the terms the pages are focused on.
This footer is on every page of the site (hundreds of pages). Some pages of my site have 10 or so additional links pointing to internal and external pages (besides the footer) and some pages (like the homepage) have about 50 links besides the footer.
I'm going for a half dozen new terms with new pages that I would be adding to the site-wide footer.
Do you think I should trim the existing footer before adding these new terms? I guess I would remove the terms that show no real hope of ever getting to page one... like pages stuck in the 40s. Or, pages I for whatever reason don't care much if they rank or not.
Would trimming it to a smaller number do more to help the remaining linked pages/terms?
What do you think? Thanks!
-
Thanks, Ryan!
-
Do you think buttons higher up the page would be more valuable than footer links?
Yes. I should clarify and state that is my personal belief. The only official confirmation I am aware of is a single statement from Matt Cutts where he states "Google reserves the right to treat footer links differently from other links". Extrapolating from that statement and using logic, it seems the more visible a link is, the more weight would be applied to it.
-
Thanks, Ryan and duly noted about links in context. Do you think buttons higher up the page would be more valuable than footer links?
-
Would trimming it to a smaller number do more to help the remaining linked pages/terms?
In that case, short answer: Yes**.**
The fewer the number of links you have on a page, the more juice will flow to those pages. You should also be aware that footer links are thought to be less valuable then links in content.
-
Thanks, but I wasn't asking about U/X.
-
When reviewing the links on your pages, there is one primary focus: what links are valuable to users. The only other thought I consider is legalities such as a requirement to provide a Privacy Policy link on the home page.
I would recommend performing analysis to determine which links are being used by your visitors. If a link isn't being used, remove it. Links affect how your page rank flows throughout your site. For optimal SEO you want to direct your link juice to valued pages.
Consider also most used don't ever see or use footer links. In my experience 28 footer links would be far too many for most sites. Every site is different and perhaps you might have a legitimate need for that many, but that is usually not the case.
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
-
Swiss based, USA links only
Hello, My company is based is Switzerland with a Swiss address and US number but my client are only in the USA. I only have links from US websites and no Swiss website. Can I be penalised by google for that ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Internal Anchor Text Links
Hi How important are internal anchor text links & rankings? I'm researching competitors and am seeing a lot of internal anchor text links with keywords helping them rank - but they have these links in their menu which at the moment isn't possible for us. We can include our top level 1 categories, but nothing below this in the top navigation Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Do image "lightbox" photo gallery links on a page count as links and dilute PageRank?
Hi everyone, On my site I have about 1,000 hotel listing pages, each which uses a lightbox photo gallery that displays 10-50 photos when you click on it. In the code, these photos are each surrounded with an "a href", as they rotate when you click on them. Going through my Moz analytics I see that these photos are being counted by Moz as internal links (they point to an image on the site), and Moz suggests that I reduce the number of links on these pages. I also just watched Matt Cutt's new video where he says to disregard the old "100 links max on a page" rule, yet also states that each link does divide your PageRank. Do you think that this applies to links in an image gallery? We could just switch to another viewer that doesn't use "a href" if we think this is really an issue. Is it worth the bother? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TomNYC0 -
What is value in a back-link from article with multiple links pointing to various other sites?
In a standard article with 400-500 words my site got a back-link. However, within the article there are 4 other links pointing to other external content as well (so total 5 links within articles all pointing to external sites, and 1 of the links is to my site). All links are to relevant external content that is. Question: wouldn't it be much more valuable for my site if only my site got a back-link from the article, as less link juice is now passed to my site, since there are 4 other links pointing to various sites from this same article? Or, is the case that given the other links are pointing to quality material it actually makes the link to my site look more credible and at the end of the day have more value. Conclusion: is it that on one hand less links in same article is better from a link juice perspective, however, from a credibility perspective it looks more convincing there are other links pointing to quality content?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0 -
On-site links
Hi everybody, There's a lot of information about getting sitewide backlinks, but so few about on-site optimization. Is there a maximum of links to put on a page ? Is there a maximum of link that a page should receive ? etc ... ? So, what is the optimal strategy ? And I'm only concerned about on-page and on-site link, not backlinks commming from other sites. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidPilon0 -
Site wide footer links vs. single link for websites we design
I’ve been running a web design business for the past 5 years, 90% or more of the websites we build have a “web design by” link in the footer which links back to us using just our brand name or the full “web design by brand name” anchor text. I’m fully aware that site-wide footer links arent doing me much good in terms of SEO, but what Im curious to know is could they be hurting me? More specifically I’m wondering if I should do anything about the existing links or change my ways for all new projects, currently we’re still rolling them out with the site-wide footer links. I know that all other things being equal (1 link from 10 domains > 10 links from 1 domain) but is (1 link from 10 domains > 100 links from 10 domains)? I’ve got a lot of branded anchor text, which balances out my exact match and partial match keyword anchors from other link building nicely. Another thing to consider is that we host many of our clients which means there are quite a few on the same server with a shared IP. Should I? 1.) Go back into as many of the sites as I can and remove the link from all pages except the home page or a decent PA sub page- keeping a single link from the domain. 2.) Leave all the old stuff alone but start using the single link method on new sites. 3.) Scratch the site credit and just insert an exact-match anchor link in the body of the home page and hide with with CSS like my top competitor seems to be doing quite successfully. (kidding of course.... but my competitor really is doing this.)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nbeske0 -
E-Commerce site - How do I geo-target towns/cities/states if there aren't any store locations?
Site = e-commerce Products = clothing (no apparel can be location specific like sports gear where you can do the location specific team gear (NBA, NFL, etc)) Problems = a. no store front b. I don't want to do any sitewides (footers, sidebars, etc) because of the penguin update Question = How do you geo-target these category pages and product pages? Ideas = a. reviews with clients locations b. blog posts with clients images wearing apparel and location description and keywords that also links back to that category or be it product page (images geo- targeted, tags, and description) c. ? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cyclone0 -
Why traffic to my link has dropped suddenly?
Hi I would like to know why the traffic for the website link http://theindustrymeasure.com/2010/07/15/rediffmail-login has dropped suddenly on google.I used to get around 5000 page views on this page and then suddenly dropped to 15-20 . I still get good traffic from yahoo (around 500). Just before the drop I noticed that I started to get spammy trackbacks from Many questionable sources. I have not approved any of these trackbacks. The trackbacks are regular frequency of. 1 per day. is there any action which I can take to ensure that I get back my traffic. Traffic to other links are fine , only this page seems to have dropped off ever since the spam attack. As per seomoz tool I have a grade a for keyword rediffmail
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ShoutOut0