Do branded footer links hurt me?
-
I run a small seo company. We work uber white hat. We are small with only 4 of us but we have a good client base with great results. My question is related to my own websites because they are the only sites in which I practice this technique.
I just watched the white board Friday about good vs bad link building. In the bad link building it mentioned never to externally link in the footer. Is this an all around statement?
For instance, every new site we make we always put links in the footer of our clients. Usually says something like "Developed by Stodzy Internet marketing Almost all the web design companies I work with do the same thing.
Is this going to help me or hurt me?
-
Thank you for this good discussion. We have a town website we developed and recently I removed our footer link. Instead, at the bottom of the homepage I put a quick line of text that says Designed By "Company Name". Now only the homepage links to us so it is ok to utilize this highest PR ranking page of their site to boost one of our keywords.
We have no official tests but we have made tremendous leaps for that keyword recently.
In summary, rather than not being able to use keywords in anchor text and gaining a ton of links all at one time (if its a large site) doesn't it make more sense to make a link in the body at the bottom of the highest PR page of the site or even homepage that says Designed By "Company Name"?
Granted placing this on only a handful of pages will reduce your overall brand exposure.
-
Quite a few answers here that can be endorsed
Basically, footer links have been abused shamelessly in the past, when they were a good way of including juice-passing links to whomever you liked without many people seeing the links. Big sites still do it and still get away with it, but we've long known that all is not fair in SEO and Amazon can sometimes get away with things that small companies cannot.
Nofollowing footer links is the safe way out, especially if you want to keep the links for branding purposes.
-
I started to type out a big long answer and realized that this would probably be better served as an entire article...so, I've just spent the last few hours writing an article on my thoughts on this question. For the last couple of years I've been watching John Mueller's Webmaster Central Hangouts and making notes. I've summarized in the article, everything that John has said related to the subject.
I hope it's not against the rules for me to link to my own stuff from the Moz Q&A. If it is, then Moz Mods, feel free to remove either the link or the post: What Google says about footer links and penalties.
The take home points are:
-Don't link with keyword anchor text
-You have to make sure that the clients are aware of the link and want to have it there (which is a tough thing to prove!)
-If you're not sure whether your links are natural then it may be best to nofollow
-
Hello Tim & Robert,
What about links to social media accounts from the footer?
-
....it mentioned never to externally link in the footer. Is this an all around statement?
If you go to Amazon.com you can see that it is not an all around statement. They have 30+ links to external domains in the footer. They are Amazon properties and linked with branded anchor.... but if those links are passing any juice then I think that they should be whacked for it.
Almost all the web design companies I work with do the same thing. Is this going to help me or hurt me?
If that is required of all clients then there will be some clients who will not hire you because they don't want links to external sites in their footer. Some don't want them because they worry that google might not like them and some just don't want advertising in their footer.
-
Tim,
I'm glad you raised that issue. I'm in a very similar situation to you and have had the same question. I have also had calls from random companies that saw my business name in the footer of a site and ended up calling for info. I would hate to have missed out on those new clients, or at the very least the branding opportunity, by not having the footer links on my clients' sites.
In my opinion I think you're spot-on with the no-follow option. I haven't implemented that yet, but will likely put that on the to-do list.
-
I agree. No follow if you are going to do it. I will also tell you that we get calls re specific sites we have built, and we do not use footer links. Do I think I could have missed a call because I did not, I would guess it is very likely.
Best,
-
Thanks man. Do you think its a good idea to keep the footer links but make them no follow? I got a phone call a week and a half ago from someone who was looking at a clients website and clicked on the link and got to our site.
I figure that can't hurt.
-
Tim
I like your question because it is presented so honestly. Yes, many web design firms and SEO firms link to themselves from client sites. My parents would say, "If Johnny jumps off a bridge are you going to jump off the same bridge?" Of course I would say, Yes! But, the thing with footer links is they were so abused they no longer carry any weight for you. To some, that would mean, oh, put them somewhere else. To me, and this is my opinion, it is not a practice I want to engage in. I have links to some of our clients from our site(s), but I do not link back to our firm from client sites.
You are a good SEO firm and are trying to do things correctly. Keep it up and don't worry about how many links you have to your site. (I realize some will call that sacrilege) If you stay at it the links will come. Post good info re SEO, web dev, etc. and links will come. I have never ceased to be amazed by the links we get to some of the oddest things we have posted. We actually posted a pic with several screen types showing responsive design sometime a year or two ago that has gotten tons of links. Go figure as there are lot of pics like that on the web.
That is one man's opinion, I'm sure there will be others.
Best to you,
Robert
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
-
Value of Outbound Links
I have read through the information on Link Building and I understand the importance of Inbound Links. Turning it on it head, how useful is it to provide outbound links on my web pages? And, do links from domains with higher domain authority get weighted higher? I have thousands of pages that I could add new articles to which I think would add value, but I want to know whether it will help for SEO.
Link Building | | troller0 -
Do links from between common sites you run count as "bad" links?
Hi everyone,
Link Building | | AMA-DataSet
Iv recently been asked to review a group of sites. There are 3 sites, each of these sites has a link to the other two sites within the footer or the navigation.
These site are about a similar topic each provides a different perceptive or aims at a specific section of the industry so its not like the links are to irreverent sites. However because the links are in a global section they are repeated thousands of times on each site and count for a large proportion of the link profile to each site, I don't think this is good practise and I want to remove them or at least add a no-follow but my client insists they are relevant to each other and doesn't not want the links removing. What would be best in this situation? remove them? no-follow them? or leave them? Thank you in advance,
Liam0 -
Wierd link
We have recently receive linek from one website. The site is quite very powerful for the word we try to rank, however the link is kind of wired. This is how it looks like: http://villasdiani.com/?db The webmaster of the site said that he ads (?db) on the end so as we would see on our analytics the traffic from his site.. Also the link is from footer...is this good or it does not have value
Link Building | | VillasDiani0 -
Link or Ad
I recently requested a link back from a site that is ranking 2nd for a term that i'm working on and they said they would gladly give me the link and remove my competitors but would also like me to have an ad on the same page for an annual fee that i could link to a landing page. I know that paying for links is no good and google can penalize you. so do i pay them and do a no follow to the landing page from the ad and call it a day? and how does google differentiate an ad from a link?
Link Building | | CHiP_RuN0 -
"Activating" Links - Do External Links Have to Be Clicked On to Really Have Value?
I heard an SEO talk about the concept of "activating" a link - meaning that if an external link to your site exists, but google doesn't detect that it has gotten any actual clicks, they will significantly discount or ignore the value of the link. Obviously between Chrome, toolbars, and GA, google does have a lot of ways to detect whether a link has gotten clicks. What is the SEOmoz take on this issue?
Link Building | | kbrake0 -
Neighborhood links
Hi, If my company offers carpet cleaning services, what neighborhood links partner I need to find. Can anybody list down the neighborhood. Thanks.
Link Building | | younus0 -
Link Directory
I am not an SEO expert by any means, just trying to improve the ranking of my own personal real estate site. Are directory links good for backlinks, or are they a waster of time?
Link Building | | CalgaryRealtor390 -
Internal linking
I 'am using a seo component (sh404sef) for a joomla website, for the time being, any internal linking is organized. I've been said the sitelinkx is not advised (a component dedicated to build internal links) with sh404sef... How could i manage to set it up fastly ? Tks a lot..
Link Building | | mozllo0