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
-
Redirect wordpress from /%post_id%/%postname%/ to /blog/%postname%/
Hi what is the code to redirect wordpress blog from site.com/%post_id%/%postname%/ to site.com/blog/%postname%/ We are moving the site to a new server and new url structure. Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Taiger0 -
If linking to contextual sites is beneficial for SE rankings, what impact does the re=“nofollow” attribute have when applied to these outbound contextual links?
Communities, opinion-formers, even Google representatives, seem to offer a consensus that linking to quality, relevant sites is good practice and therefore beneficial for SEO. Does this still apply when the outbound links are "nofollow"? Is there any good research on this out there?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | danielpressley0 -
Duplicate content on .com .au and .de/europe/en. Would it be wise to move to .com?
This is the scenario: A webstore has evolved into 7 sites in 3 shops: example.com/northamerica example.de/europe example.de/europe/en example.de/europe/fr example.de/europe/es example.de/europe /it example.com.au .com/northamerica .de/europe/en and .com.au all have mostly the same content on them (all 3 are in english). What would be the best way to avoid duplicate content? An answer would be very much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO-Bas0 -
Which is better /section/ or section/index.php?
I have noticed that Google has started to simply link to /section/ as opposed to /section/index.php and I haven't changed any canonical tags etc. I have looked at my pages moz authority for the two /section/ = 28/100
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TimHolmes
/section/index.php = 42/100 How would I go about transferring the authority to /section/ from /section/index.php to hopefully help me in my organic serp positions etc. Any insight would be great 🐵0 -
Disavow Links Notification
No manual actions on our sites, just Penguin related. I put in a disavow for one site in October and Webmaster Tools kept a message up for some time saying the disavow links file for that site had been updated. I put in a disavow for another site of ours last week and I've had no such message. I checked and the file is there. Was this an intentional change on Google's part? Just want to make sure something's not messed up here.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingof50 -
Link Research Tools - Detox Links
Hi, I was doing a little research on my link profile and came across a tool called "LinkRessearchTools.com". I bought a subscription and tried them out. Doing the report they advised a low risk but identified 78 Very High Risk to Deadly (are they venomous?) links, around 5% of total and advised removing them. They also advised of many suspicious and low risk links but these seem to be because they have no knowledge of them so default to a negative it seems. So before I do anything rash and start removing my Deadly links, I was wondering if anyone had a). used them and recommend them b). recommend detoxing removing the deadly links c). would there be any cases in which so called Deadly links being removed cause more problems than solve. Such as maintaining a normal looking profile as everyone would be likely to have bad links etc... (although my thinking may be out on that one...). What do you think? Adam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NaescentAdam0 -
Our site is recieving traffic for both .com/page and .com/page/ with the trailing slash.
Our site is recieving traffic for both .com/page and .com/page/ with the trailing slash. Should we rewrite to just the trailing slash or without because of duplicates. The other question is, if we do a rewrite, google has indexed some pages with the slash and some without - i am assuming we will lose rank for one of them once we do the rewrite, correct?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Profero0 -
Measurement of Link Value
Over the past few months I have encountered webmasters who claim to be using instruments far better than open site explorer but they will not disclose what they are. Are there better ways of determining the value of a link than OSE? Is "link juice" more important than page/domain authority where the link resides? Or vice-vesa. Any help understanding this would be appreciated. I do not want to offend other webmasters but I also do not want to be fooled by them either while negotiating a link exchange with them
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340