Worthwhile to have global footer links?
-
About Us, FAQ, Site Map, Terms & Privacy - I know rarely viewed by users (at least on my website), so why keep in global footer across all pages, since one could argue it will dilute some link juice to more important pages?Why not just keep on homepage only? What is argument for having links to these pages across all pages on a site? Is there any SEO value?
-
Thanks for the great answers! This is very helpful for me.
-
good answer, Cyrus. I think the trust factor is probably more relevant than that 1% of users that may click. Other users will scroll and see those about, faq etc links and that ads trust and I think that is key why it makes sense to keep.
-
Hi Kristian,
Generally, we advise to keep links in useful places that add value for visitors, but prune links that are added solely for search engine manipulation.
Links like "About Us" and "privacy" can add a huge amount of trust to a website. Even if only 1% of your customers click there, it's a huge value add for those customers, in my opinion.
Yes, there is an issue of pagerank dilution, but unless you have dozens of links in this area it's usually a minimal concern. Search engines use so many other ranking factors, it's not a big deal.
That said, it's sometimes useful to combine links - both for ease of navigation and link consolidation. Like "Terms & Privacy" and "About Us" - which leads to a seperate pages about Team > Services > etc.
-
If your users are looking for that information in the footer those links should be there. To remove them in case it provides some ephemeral SEO benefit is looking at your website the wrong way around.
Billions of pages have those same links in those same spots. This includes some of the best, and best-ranking pages on the internet. I wouldn't worry.
If you are really concerned for some reason - here's an idea. Have a single link to covering all those topics going to a page called 'legal' or something. Link that page to the pages you used to have in the footer, but also to key pages in the site.
Mathematically that greatly reduces the problem of leaking pagerank. However I suspect that there are far far better uses of resources.
-
If its organized and really simple like the footer here in SEOMoz (check below), then keep it. If its just 5-6 footer links, I dont think it would take up a lot of link juice.
Plus footer links, (not considering SEO and Google) are indeed useful for site navigation purposes.
-
My footer links are well-organized, but few and they are About, FAQ, Sitemap, Terms & Privacy, which in theory are good for users to have access to throughout my site. However, if I know less than 5% of users click on those, that means very little user value. Will it help me from an SEO perspective to keep those footer links throughout my site or is the answer a clear "no" and I should only keep if the users benefit from having those links. Again, especially on my deeper pages with low PA, I am concerned about spreading the link juice on an already weak page....
-
Hi Kristian,
Global footer links are not anymore recommended to have on websites as they used to.
Aside from what you mentioned about link juice being passed on away from the more important pages, footer links are, most of the time, devalued by search engines and they also get low CTR.
Still, a lot of sites are still using them as resource for link placement.
So I guess it still depends if you have a really nice organization and layout as a footer (like this: http://shopper.cnet.com) then keep it. If not, it might just be a waste of your time.
Cheers!
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 many on page links
Hi I know previously it was recommended to stick to under 100 links on the page, but I've run a crawl and mine are over this now with 130+ How important is this now? I've read a few articles to say it's not as crucial as before. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Sitewide Footer Links & Sister Sites
Hi We have a number of sister sites across Europe - the sites are under a different domain name, but have a very similar layout & product offering. When looking at duplicate content, they are flagged as being a moderate risk with similar content - we don't duplicate product content, however it's similar. We also link to them in the footer in a drop down - not anchor text links - however this is still seen by Google. I don't think I'll be able to remove links to our sister companies, but should I implement the Href lang if the sites are slightly different? Or find another way to link to them? Here's an example http://www.key.co.uk/en/key & https://www.manutan.fr/fr/maf
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Do you get links from new websites?
There's a new industry specific website that looks decent. It's clean and nothing spammy. However, it's so new it's DA is under 10. Is it worth pursuing a link from a site like this? On one hand, there's nothing spammy and it is industry specific. On the other...it's just DA is so terrible (worse than any of our other links), I don't want it to hurt us. Any thoughts? Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
Link Building
I have to develop a strategy for link building. The SEO guy I have been speaking with has started putting links on .edu sites etc . To me - this "stinks" of manipulating the search engines - which I know we will get stung by at some point. I hope this isn't standard practice - but I don't know what the best way to improve rankings in terms of links etc. We sell health products and are starting to put out 3-4 high quality articles per week. Ideas? Kind Regards Martin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear1 -
Are Navigation links different to static links
We are trying to reduce the number of links on our homepage. We could remove some fly out navigation links, We rank 1st on Google for some of these links. Would removing these hurt our SEO. The links are accessible 1 level down if we remove the homepage.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Archers0 -
Best internal linking structure?
We are considering implementing a site-wide contextual linking structure. Does anyone have some good guidelines / blog posts on this topic? Our site is quite (over 1 million pages), so the contextual linking would be automated, but we need to define a set of rules. Basically, if we have a great page on 'healthy recipes,' should we make every instance of the word 'healthy recipes' link back to that page, or should we limit it to a certain number of pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Links in Behind a Tab in Body vs Footer
Though I would ask the community this as it relates to positioning of external links on page vs. code and body vs footer. Working with a strategic partner for some data sharing arrangements and the question exists whether followed links in the template footer to our partners website provide better value vs. Body Links with context behind a CSS Tab (All code for Tabbed content is resolved on the same page)? Yes there are links coming back from the partner site as well.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AU-SEO0 -
Links on Google Notebook
I have used OSE to look at links of a competitors site and notice they have dozens for links from Google Notebook pages eg http://www.google.pl/notebook/public/05275990022886032509/BDQExDQoQs8r3ls4j This page has a PA of 48 Is this a legitimate linking strategy?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seanmccauley0