How to minimalise links in your footer
-
Hi guys,
I'm working on the website to improve the internal linking structure. We have thousand of pages, and on every single page we have the same footer with the same links. For this reason I would like to change the footer in only relevant links for the user, but also for the robots. So for the user I leave in the general main links Home / Contact / Promotions and customise a part of the links to specific links about the section they are looking at.
Now my idea was to add to the General Main links a Nofollow, so I direct the robots in a better structure about how to read the website.
I have been reading a lot about internal linkbuilding- like http://www.seomoz.org/blog/smarter-internal-linking-whiteboard-friday and
http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/internal-link
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/information-architecture-rocket-science-simplified/22503/
and a lot more, too much to display all. but my question would be, is it smart to internally start using NOFOLLOW's on links.
because I do found also some negative comments on this approach
http://www.dashboardjunkie.com/noindex-nofollow-canonical-and-disallow
I hope to get some feedback from the community to make up my mind.
-
Hi Letty,
I agree with the others here. There are exceptions, but for the most part you want Google to be able to follow most of the links on your site. The rule can be broken, but as a best practice there's usually no harm in following your links.
That said, I'm a big, huge fan of link consolidation and faceted navigation.
I've seen a lot of positive results from sites that have cleaned up and consolidated thier footer links, so I'm hopeful about what you're doing!
-
I second the dofollow advice from Oleg. Nofollow is not the way to go here.
I just want to add that your footer links need to be "relevant" to a person coming in to ANY page on your site. That's how I try to build them. Obviously there are some common ones, home, contact, etc. If the link in the footer is only specific to a particular part of your website and wouldn't be helpful to someone coming into a different section, then remove them. If it will help ANYONE no matter what page they are on, then keep them.
-
The opinions about the usage of internal nofollow links are mixed, but since Google changed how they treat nofollowed links using nofollow for internal links is not such a good idea.
Basically you are loosing link juice.
Now, what you can do, is to have (if possible) targeted links in the footer (if you are using WP you can accomplish that by using conditional tags).
The idea is to let PR flow naturally. This is the conclusion of my readings.
Spare 2 minutes and check out this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4SAPUx4Beh8
-
If you are trying to consolidate link authority by changing some links to be nofollow, that won't work. This would have worked a few years back when nofollow was used for pagerank sculpting, but G has changed the way these links are treated.
I would dofollow all the internal links on your site.
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
-
Reasonable to Ask URL of Link from SEO Providing New Links before Link Activation?
My firm has hired an SEO to create links to our site. We asked the SEO to provide a list of domains that they are targeting for potential links. The SEO did not agree to this request on the grounds that the list is their unique intellectual property. Alternatively I asked the SEO to provide the URL that will be linking to our site before the link is activated. The SEO did not agree to this. However, they did say we could provide comments afterwards so they could tweak their efforts when the next 4-5 links are obtained next month. The SEO is adamant that the links will not be spam. For whatever it is worth the SEO was highly recommended. I am an end user; the owner and operator of a commercial real estate site, not an SEO or marketing professional. Is this protectiveness over process and data typical of link building providers? I want to be fair with the provider and hope I will be working with them a long time, however I want to ensure I receive high quality links. Should I be concerned? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Internal Linking
Hi, I'm doing internal anchor text links. Relative path. if I use /destination-page instead of https://website.com/destination-page will I still receive a transfer of internal Google trust to the destination page? Does google treat just the / url the same as full url??
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Scotty_Wilson0 -
Directory links with no follow
Hi I'm researching competitor backlinks & they have a lot of directory links which are no follow - but they rank very well. Is this type of link building even allowed by google? I know they they aren't allowed followed directory links, but will no following them help with rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Link Brokers Yes or No?
We have a client who has asked us to talk to link brokers to speed up the back linking process. Although I've been aware of them for ages I have never openly discussed the possible use of 'buying' links or engaging in that part of the industry. Do they have a place in SEO and if so what is the MOZ communities thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
Link Building Strategy?
If I use unique content written from writers & post it to good sites (free blogs, bookmarking, directory, articles sites, etc.) having nice good cache, good PR, different IP's do i still have a chance of get hit by Spam actions of google? Planning to do like just 30-50 a month all with unique content or say 1 unique content then re-written & used not more than 3 times. If not this then What else would you suggest? One more thing to add up, like i have 1000+ pages out of which i have like 80-90 pages that matters to me (important pages) then how do I spin the anchor text between all the pages. Should i spin them between 1000+ pages or use only 80-90 IMP pages. If the content is 300 words let say then how many anchor tags should i have?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | welcomecure0 -
What Links to Disavow?
I am looking through my website's link profile that I pulled directly from Google Webmaster Tools. What is the best way to determine the links to disavow? Maybe the Webmaster Tools list is not the best list for this process but I really need to clean up the links that are hurting the site's SEO. Does anyone have any insight?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PartyStore0 -
How much link juice could be passed?
When evaluating a site to decide whether or not to peruse a link, how do you decide if it is passing enough link juice to peruse the matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | runnerkik0 -
Best Link Solicitation Email Structure - Link Building
Hello, What is the best thing to say when soliciting a link for link building. Say you're contacting a site with a resource section where your competitors are listed. What would you say to be the most persuasive. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0