How to handle footer links after Penguin?
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With the launch of Google's Penguin I know that footer links could possibly hurt rankings. Also too many links on a page are also bad. I have a client http://www.m-scribe.com That has footer links creating well over 100 links on many of their pages. How should I handle these footer links? Suggestions are greatly appreciated.
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You should check this out http://www.seomoz.org/blog/penguins-pandas-and-panic-at-the-zoo
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I would add rel="nofollow" to most or all of them, and/or add a site map link to the footer and place all of those links on a sitemap page.
The nofollow is best used for links that link to sites you don't want to give credibility to, and the site map should be for internal links.
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I have not seen any incidences of a Penguin penalty where internal links played any part. Nothing in either of Google's link penalty notices make mention or inference of internal links playing any part
S
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Back in the day footer links were generally being used "so robots could index the site better" and eventually many people were stuffing a ton of keyword down there.
Now, I believe, the best way of looking at it is what clicks are most useful to the visitor. Logically, I would include 5 or 10 links to pages with the most traffic and rotate quarterly so that they are "fresh".
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If it makes sense to place a link place it. Sitewide links (footer links) should be links, which your users are most likely going to look for, by placing links in the footer you are making it easier for your user to contact you, or find what it is they came to your site for. Abusing sitewide links (footer links) is having all your keywords or all the cities you service written for the search engine.
Here is a resent whiteboard Friday that will explain in detail how to link a site where it makes sense: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/smarter-internal-linking-whiteboard-friday
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Here's a good discussion on the issue of footer links:
http://www.seomoz.org/q/google-penguin-question-re-footer-links
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