Site wide internal links in footer
-
I have had a long discussion with a client and their external SEO partner about their current footer. They have added all their product categories, both main and sub, to the footer.
From a pure SEO perspective is it still advisable, after all the pandas and penguines, to stay away from keyword important site wide footer linking to internal pages?
As the links will become a repeatable element and also containing the most important keywords, isn't the links actually hurting more than helping?
With 5000 index pages, it will risk "marking" the most important keywords as repeatable, lowering ranking, instead of increasing as their external part say.
-
My recommendation was just that. Take away all excessive linking with subcagegories and even primary categories and instead add more generic, but traffic hub important footer links. This is how I "always" recommend to clients, but since all of the panda updates and the external SEO partner (who is responsible for the links in the first place) protested, I just wanted to get some pro input from all of the SEO pros here at moz
-
If they are repeating keywords in all those links there is potential harm and from a structural stand point this type of linking leaks theme all over the place. If they were my client I would be pushing to at least remove sub cats.
-
I added important categories to the footer of our website just 2 weeks back and started seeing new traffic instantly. I think you should keep footer links.
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
-
Is it helpful for seo to have helpful links at the footer?
HI, suppose my homepage has good content but no external links to other sites for more info. and no helpful internal links in the footer to learn more. and my competition has 9 internal links in the footer which links to other pages on the site who has more SEO boost? I know the answer , does it really makes a difference or its minute?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SIMON-CULL1 -
Shopfiy Technical SEO: Internal Linking Structure
Hi Community, While Shopify’s canonical tag properly points to the preferred version of the URL (i.e./product/product-title), internal links still point to the various non-canonical versions throughout the site. For example, in collection pages, each product thumbnail links to non-canonical URLs (i.e. /collection/collection-title/products/product-title). I know it is not good as we have to keep the linking consistent. So, I read a blog post by Moz and changed the internal link to the canonical URL(i.e./product/product-title). My change is from{{ product.url | within: collection }} to {{ product.url }}. Very interestingly, I can manage the change for some collections but some collections don't work. Can you please suggest how I can change fix the linking for all collection pages? One of the collection example that works: https://shopmtn.eu/collections/dirty-rigger ; One of the collection example that doesn't work: https://shopmtn.eu/collections/truss My Shopify Template: Parallax. THANK YOU VERY MUCHbN1Heqq zoyDPco
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Insightful_Media0 -
Viewing search results for 'We possibly have internal links that link to 404 pages. What is the most efficient way to check our sites internal links?
We possibly have internal links on our site that point to 404 pages as well as links that point to old pages. I need to tidy this up as efficiently as possible and would like some advice on the best way to go about this.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andyheath0 -
Internal nofollow links
Hello, We have a blog and at the end each blog post (and from the sidebar) we link to one main product page (tagged with a particular query string). Now Google will see from every blog post all of these internal links pointing back to this page. Do you think this would cause a problem and that these links should be nofollowed? I think Google will kind of detect that these is kind of a "navigation" as the code will be the same across all webpages. Most of all, doing them nofollow I think it is worse because it may trigger some sort of pagerank sculpting algo filter, if it still exists. Thanks, Conrad
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conalt0 -
Backlinking 3 sites from same domain and backlinking main site too
Hello, we have 4 sites, in which 1 is a main site and rest 3 are niche sites All these 3 sites have dofollow links to main site from home page We got a high quality backlink - through which all 3 niche sites have got it from that domain Is it worth to add backlink from that domain to main site too, despite the fact the 3 sites already have recvd it and they all link to main site many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
On site links triggering anchor text algorithmic penatly?
I'm trying to figure out why a drop in ranking occurred and think it may be related to an increase in on site links. I've attached images of the SEO moz report showing a jump in links from a few hundred to around 15,000 within the space of a week. I think this may be due to some on site work I did when I created categories (I use wordpress) for a large number of cities and towns in the UK. I soon realised I'd run into duplicate content issues and removed all these categories within a few days. As I added categories I also ran into 'too many on page links' warnings as each category I added created a new link and I ended up with hundreds on each page. If you look at the analytics reports I suffered a huge drop in rankings on the 10th March and think this could be due to an on site anchor text problem that was caused by adding the categories and in turn creating many on site links. SEO moz found these links on the 11th and 25th Feb but my guess is that Google found them around at the same time but if these links are the problem then why didn't my rankings drop until the 10th March? Surely they would have dropped sooner? Would this cause a drop in rankings? I've recieved an email from google saying that no manual penalty was applied to the site after I submitted a reconsideration request. Therefore it must be some kind of algorithmic penalty. Could this be the problem and if not what else should I look at. My baclink profile appears to be okay and I've been careful to vary my anchor text with inbound link building. I'm at a loss as to what to do next. Any help will be much appreciated! UXsMLYS.png Ov9AOs8.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
How can I penalise my own site in an international search?
Perhaps penalise isn't the right word, but we have two ecommerce sites. One at .com and one at .com.au. For the com.au site we would like only that site to appear for our brand name search in google.com.au. For the .com site we would like only that site to appear for our brand name search in google.com. I've targeted each site in the respective country in Google Webmaster Tools and published the Australian and English address on the respective site. What I'm concerned about is people on Google.com.au searching our brand and clicking through to the .com site. Is there anything I can do to lower the ranking of my .com site in Google.com.au?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Benj250 -
Site Architecture: Cross Linking vs. Siloing
I'm curious to know what other mozzers think about silo's... Can we first all agree that a flat site architecture is the best practice? Relevant pages should be grouped together. Shorter, broader and (usually) therefore higher volume keywords should be towards the top of each category. Navigation should flow from general to specific. Agreed? As Google say's on page 10 of their SEO Starter Guide, "you should think about how visitors will go from a general page (your root page) to a page containing more specific content ." OK, we all agree so far, right? Great! Enter my question: Bruce Clay (among others) seem to recommend siloing as a best practice. While Richard Baxter (and many others @ SEOmoz), seem to view silos as a problem. Me? I've practiced (relevant) internal cross linking, and have intentionally avoided siloing in almost all cases. What about you? Is there a time and place to use silos? If so, when and where? If not, how do we rectify the seemingly huge differences of opinions between expert folks such as Baxter and Clay?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DonnieCooper7