Crosslinking Question - Footer or Header?
-
We own 9 fashion blogs that focus on different niches. We have Your Next Shoes focusing on shoes, Your Next Dress focusing on dresses, Your Next Handbag focusing on handbags, and so on.
Previously we had links in the blog header to the other sister sites. Your Next Shoes had text links to its 8 sister sites, and so on. However, we were told that this could cause a cross-linking penalty, so we removed these links. My understanding now is that the advice we were given is not necessarily correct.
We think it is useful for our visitors to see that we also operate other blogs, so we are thinking of adding back the links - this time to our footer. Basically I am looking for advise on the best way to go about this.
-
I basically agree with Cesar's opinion. But if your brands have a close relation to each other I think it's okay to link to those - from header or footer. Header links will look less spammy since they are well visible for users. If your brands have a legit connection to each other there should be no riks - at least that is my experience with well-established brands that belong to the same company.
But linking from related content always has some benefits compared to sitewide linking - at least for seo. If you want to push cross-selling, linking from a header meta navigation makes sense.
-
If you were placing all the same links on all the different domains then I think that would raise a red flag to Google so I would not suggesting doing that.
Figure out how to make sure the links that go to your other sites are relevant. Instead of a site wide link, link on specific pages that closely relate.
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 on my homepage question?
Question, on moz analytics, for my homepage, I've gotten the " Too many on page links" notification every crawl. I've always ignored it because i didnt think it affected ranking or anything really. The on page links on the bottom of our homepage are landing pages. Most users reach those pages by searching those specific pages on google. We just decided to put them on the bottom of our page for unknown reasons. My question is, should i remove the landing pages on the bottom of our homepage? WIll it improve search rankings for my homepage? if i do remove them, should i put the landing pages on another page besides the homepage? Does google index my website better without the on page links on my homepage? My website is- prestigeluxuryrentals.com
On-Page Optimization | | prestigeluxuryrentals.com0 -
H1 question
is it recommended to have the page title labeled as H1? or better to have page title and separate H1 ? thank you
On-Page Optimization | | gergi0 -
Question about overoptimization and images "alt"
Hello, I own a shop with lots of categories, in each category there is a lot of pictures, some have already alt, must I put the attribute alt in all images, it would be 100% beneficial for my site or could would I be over-optimizing the site? Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | yuyuyu0 -
Question about the variations of keyphrases on different pages
Hi, I am a big fan of seomoz and read a lot of articles! I have a new site for services in London. I have 5 main keyphrases on 5 different pages. Would it be better to make new pages with variations of those 5 keyphrases? As an example: one of the main keyphrases is "Service London" and I want to create new pages -- "Services West Ruislip", "Services Poplar", "Services Brixton" and etc. Should it be better to do it as described or to keep the 5 main keywords and focus on them? Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | yanko840 -
"City page" links in footer of home page: Spammy?
Is listing a bunch of links to city pages in the footer of a home page considered "spammy" to Google? (ie- Chicago Alarms, Illinois Alarms, Naperville Alarms, etc.) What are the negative affects this might have on ranking, if any?
On-Page Optimization | | MChi0 -
Question Regarding Site Structure
I have a quick question regarding site structure that I hope some of you guys could share your opinion on. I watched a white board friday from Rand a little while back where he explains that you need to try and make the site structure as flat as possible. He was saying try having no more that 3 links from the home page to get to the desired location. My question is this. I am looking at a site that has a pretty complex structure that I am trying to clear up as much as possible without making any of there rankings suffer. So they have www.domian.com/general-category/district/town/ and sometimes www.domian.com/general-category/district/town/item-specifics Now i know it is not good as it is, but they are dubious about changing too much as they have some serious traffic coming to the site. But, my question is that all the pages can be found from the home page through the menus/sub-menus. But do these count as a direct link from the home page. Also a problem is that because of this mozbot has detected that there are too many links from the home page and suggested that it should be below 200. But should I make these menu links no index or no follow. Obviously, by doing this, if the link does count as direct from the home page it wont after doing this. Thanks Jenson
On-Page Optimization | | jensonseo0 -
Footer Navigation
We have links to our key pages at the top of the website:- Home Our Services Work Examples About Us But we have many more pages than this. In the footer of the website we have additional links to the individual services and pages such as FAQs and Customer Feedback. Does having the links here lessen their effectiveness in terms of SEO?
On-Page Optimization | | AndieF0 -
Are footer links at the end of each page still considered to be a valid tactic?
This is pretty much an opinion question, I was under the impression that footer links had been devalued almost to the point of uselessness, and if they weren't going to be of any real use to the users of the site why bother. I was speaking to a web developer though whose opinion I do largely trust who remains very pro footer links, and I was wondering what everyone else thought. Am I being too dismissive, or are footer links on the way out?
On-Page Optimization | | Tompt0