Sitewide links and ways round it
-
Hi there. I'm just re-reading The Art of SEO to ensure we have everything in place for our own website relaunch, and there was something that left me slightly confused with regards to sitewide links.
As a web design company, a lot of our links come from sitewides on client websites, currently in the pages' footer region.
Would these count as sitewide links, and would varying the target page and/or anchor text make these links count for more and be less of a red flag?
Alternatively, is there a way we can get credit from the sites we have designed without running the risk of having our links marked down or ignored altogether by the search engines?
(As an aside, it doesn't seem to have affected us so far, although it is obvious that only a small percentage of the inbound links are passing any real value - again, is this something we can rectify somehow?)
-
Thanks for your prompt reply - it pretty much confirmed what I thought. As far as the footprint goes, that's not too much of an issue - we have all the clients listed on our site anyway, so it's no huge drama for people to find this out. Also, we don't work with anyone we would be happy to shout about.
Something on the About Us, or possibly the news page for new sites, could be doable. I guess the only thing that caused confusion was the paragraph in the book that implied the authors' experiments showed differing location pages and anchor text throughout the site was treated somewhat nearer linear instead of being ignored.
-
If they're footer links on the entire site, then they ARE sitewide links. Part of the problem is, how is Google (or Bing, or any other SE) to know that they're your clients and not paid links or your own little private link network (which they are ... sort of)? That's why the links don't pass much value.
Aside from the SEO implications, It also gives people the ability to "footprint" your entire client list. That may or may not be something you want.
If your clients are really happy with your work, and it wouldn't be out of character with the web site, they might be amenable to giving you a "shout out" somewhere else on the site or perhaps a mention on the "About us" page.
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
-
Are you still disavowing links?
In light of the Penguin update a few months back, are you still disavowing links? Penguin is meant to now ignore spammy links, meaning that manual disavow via Search Console is not needed. However, the feature stills remains in Search Console, suggesting that it is still helpful (or have Google just not got around to removing it yet?) Be interesting to hear your thoughts.
Link Building | | helga730 -
GWT Lists URLs with links to my site, but those URLs don't have links to my site
There are a number of URLs that show up for my website in Webmaster Tools as having links to my site when in fact they don't. I know this to be a fact because I actually wrote some of the sites that Google is saying are linking to my site and I know there isn't any links on the specific pages to that site. For example, the site in question is: https://www.liftproducts.com/ As an example, Google is saying that about 100 URLs from https://www.lift-tables.net/ are linking to it when, I'm fairly confident that there is only 1 link to it found here: https://www.lift-tables.net/info.php?countrytabs=3 Yet Google says links exist on this (and many more) page: https://www.lift-tables.net/liftproducts/max-lift/lpt4w-030-48.php I thought at first it might have been due to linking to a image file directly instead of locally hosting it, but after checking the source, that's not the case. I am also seeing this type of non-linking being reported on sites I have no clue what they are. For example, some Spanish site about tandem bicycles is being listed as linking to liftproducts.com: http://206-225-85-34.dedicated.abac.net/tandem/inc Yet I can find no evidence of an actual link existing. Am I missing something here? Any insight of why this is happening and how I can clean up my link signature would be appreciated.
Link Building | | Nivik231 -
Ecomerce: Would 4 link sections leak too much link juice?
Hello, In my content management for our ecomerce site, I've found that there are sometimes links to sites in our industry that have "helpful links" sections. Several strong sites link directly to these resource sections. There are 4 different topics that fit this trend in our industry. Would it leak too much link juice to make 4 comprehensive link sections and place a link to them on our "Useful Articles" page? Or should I stick to one comprehensive link section? Or perhaps a small link section? Or none at all? Thanks.
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
Best way to structure a service area page with many locations to maximize internal links to them?
Currently our service area page (http://www.njlimocarservice.com/services.html) very sloppily lists many of the towns we serve in multiple counties - over 50 approx (scroll down). They have been placed that way so there is links to them from one of the subpages directly linked from the root domain. I am now attempting to make it pretty and organized with my designer. I intend to maintain a link to each individual town/landing page for SEO purposes to keep it close to root domain. My questions is how to best structure this. I don't want to list by county because some people don't know what county the town is in. However an alphabetical list may be overkill as there is so many. The other option is to get a search form or dropdown list on there but how will my landing pages be recognized by crawlers if there is no internal links from my root domain? Eventually we plan to expand further so what happens when we add 100+ landing pages? What will then happen to my internal link juice? Thanks!
Link Building | | kabledesigns0 -
Link Building the Right Way?
There are still a few things that I need clarifications for link building. I have joined many forums and I am following some big website (Seomoz / search engine watch / search engine land) and such for ideas about link building. There are various different suggestions among them for example about Create a blog, Profile links, Article directories,Web 2.0 submission,Press release submission, Infographic submissions,Company directory submissions,Video submissions,Niche specific directories,Logo/Graphic/Web design directories,Free web directories,Non-English directories,RSS directories,Guest posting,Games Submission's and social bookmarking, Blog commenting, Forum posting.Q&A,Wiki Links,Local listings,Getting trackbacks. one would say to use it the other would say not to, can you please guide as to what is the right way to follow these suggestions. Also nofollow backlinks have any effect on the SERP? Thanks.
Link Building | | KLLC1 -
How do you check to see if your site (site A) has already been linked to by another site (site B) when you have a large site with lots of links
There are some basics in SEO relating to finding out about who has linked to whom that I could use some help with.
Link Building | | hughman0 -
What is the best way to obtain a large number of branded links in the fastest, most efficient way? White Hat only please.
Just foresee this issue coming up with a couple of clients and while I am preparing a strategy of my own, I felt it would be helpful to ask the community their thoughts as well.
Link Building | | anvilmediainc0 -
Sitewide link dilema
About 3 years ago I acquired a sitewide sidebar backlink on very good site. Today 3 years later my site has 27,080 backlinks from the same domain with the same anchor text and I am concerned this could be doing my site more harm than good. The site is good quality well indexed PR5, some inner pages also have good PR. My dilemmas are: Should I have the link removed or leave it put? Would taking down so many links in one go do me harm? My instinct would be to remove the sitewide and just keep the homepage link but that is not an option Can anyone help? Thanks
Link Building | | shauny350