Thoughts on these footer links
-
I have a site that has about 20 footer links. A main Category and 4-5 links under each.
The site is very large, so I feel they do have some value for navigation, and they don't blend in with the background at all.
I know penguin was cracking down on footer links, but I don't feel theses are "spammy" links.
Will it hurt long-term to leave these links, or should we pull them?
-
New post on the SEOmoz blog that addresses some of the good and bad things about footer links. Give it a look....
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/internal-linking-strategies-for-2012-and-beyond
-
Just me guessin'.....
I doubt that they will "hurt" your site unless those links are going to external sites with a poor reputation or external sites that are unrelated.
One thing that I can say with a little more confidence...
When I place a link to a page in the top navigation of my site the rankings usually go up.... and the page that I removed to make space for it usually drops. It takes weeks to months to see this change but that is my experience.
-
I like your creative reply. I guess it doesn't matter what we think. Is there any way to tell if footer links are actually hurting your site?
-
EGOL: "I don't feel theses are "spammy" links."
Google: "What you think doesn't matter."
EGOL: uhhh....
Google: "If these are such kickass links why are you hiding them in the footer? Get them up high and in bold font so that everybody who enters the site will see them.... Then we will give them their due importance."
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
-
Too much internal linking?
Hi everyone, Too much of anything is not good. In terms of internal linking, how many are too many? I read that the recommended internal links are about 100 links per page otherwise it dilutes the page's link equity. I have a concern about one of our websites - according to search console, the homepage has 923 internal links. All the pages have a corresponding /feed page added to the page URL, which is really weird (is this caused by a plugin?). The site also has an e-com feature, but it is not used as the site is essentially a brochure and customers are encouraged to visit the shop. I assume the e-com feature also increases this number. On the other hand, one of the competitors we are tracking has 1 internal link site-wide. Ours is at 45,000 site-wide. How is it possible to only have 1 internal link? Is this a Moz bug? I know we also need to reduce our internal links badly, however, I'm not sure where to start. I don't know how these internal links are linked together - some aren't in the copy or navigation menu. When I scan the homepage links using 'check my links', the total links identified for the homepage is only 170. kAeYlTM
On-Page Optimization | | nhhernandez0 -
Should I nofollow certain outbound links?
Hi, All of our outbound links are currently follow.I've read that the only case where nofollow should be used, according to Google, is for paid links, crawl prioritization & untrustworthy sites.The kinds of websites we are linking to from our blog include:- Websites with great content & high authority that is relevant to the topic we've written about that would enhance the user experience- Partners/companies we have a strong relationship with who also have decent authority- Social media profiles of industry people not within our organisation - Websites with definitions/wikipedia/soundcloud/published statistics/news sites and other large well known sites. I am wondering if we should put the nofollow attribute on the last 2 points (social media profiles of people we've referenced, websites with definitions/wikipedia/soundcloud/published statistics/news sites and other large well known sites.)Or do you think it's totally fine that all our links are follow provided the websites are legitimate, trustworthy and have some authority?Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | PGAUE0 -
Internal Linking
I am trying to figure out internal linking. Please help me. Your "root domain" (the top level example.com) is the easiest to rank on a SERP. When you build Page Rank on this page, you want to make sure the majority of the PR goes into internal pages that matter. To do this you determine what internal pages are most important and put them on the menu bar. You then link to these pages in the body text, or via side bars. This will ensure that the PR is flowing from the root domain into the internal pages multiple times. The second part is to link from these secondary pages back to the main page. Correct? When you build back links on the internal page, you want to pass the PR back to the main page... Please discuss this...
On-Page Optimization | | JML11790 -
Too Many On-Page Links error
Hello, I am new to this. The crawl of y website reveals that "Too Many On-Page Links" were found on many pages of the website. However, when I check those pages, not more than 5 links are found- I have not included links outside of the post (sidebar/comments/related posts - are these counted in the crawl report ?). I do use SEO SmartLinks Plugin where in some keywords point to Wordpress Categories but am not sure whether that could be the problem at all. Can someone guide what the issue could be and how to debug ?
On-Page Optimization | | sradhey0 -
Navigation causing too many links
If I add pages to my site to cover major cities/towns/counties in the UK where I offer wedding bands and link them from the navigation using drop down menus/categories ( I believe this is the best option to allow users to find what they are looking for) I get a'too many links on page' flag. How can I best get around this problem?
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Internal linking structure
howdy SEO moz people, I had a quick question about internal linking. I am using the WP platform for my website and on one of the widgets I have a category widget that shows all the pages, (on every page). I wanted to know that when if i make a new post or page does it matter if the internal anchor texts are on the content itself or is it suffice to have it on the side bar within the widget? Basically what im asking is does it matter if i have anchor text links on the content itself or is it ok to have it anywhere on the page. and if it does matter to have it on the content, please help out on any suggestions on where to place them. thanks
On-Page Optimization | | david3050 -
301 redirect link
Hi, I found some explanations on seomoz about permanently links, but I'm not sure, if I understood right, what to do. Our website has been created with a wrong structure and I have to change the URL of a couple of pages. E. G. http://www.ix-tours.com/Youth/ixdestBrusselYouth.aspx should be changed to http://www.ix-tours.com/DE/Jugend/BruesselJ.aspx to allow search identify it as a german page. What to do? Should I delete all content from the old page and insert the redirect to the knew one? The code as follows has to be inserted in the head section? Thank you for your help Brgds georg
On-Page Optimization | | itmlage0 -
Too many On-Page Links warning + Javascript Menu
We do have javascript menus on each page. These are used by a visitor to contact a specific office in a specif city. Could this be where all these links are being counted? I don't see them elsewhere? What about links that are in the footer? They actually link to the same pages as the menus, but are just straight links.
On-Page Optimization | | Stevej240