Keyword rich footer links negative effect
-
Based on bits and pieces of information I've read on SEOmoz, am I correct to state that:
"Keyword-rich footer links effect pages negatively in terms of the keyword referenced in the anchor text?"This means footer links in
Thanks in advance fellow Mozzers!
-
I don't think there is any hard evidence on them, Rand talks about the footers and manipulation here:
There is evidence on the fact that if they are linking to a page that has already been linked to higher in the code, they count for nothing. Only the first anchor text links count in google's eyes. So unless you're linking to pages that are not within the nav, it's fairly pointless from an SEO point of view.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/results-of-google-experimentation-only-the-first-anchor-text-counts
I think using the Footer for linking to pages already linked to is a waste of time. People use the navigation to find the page they're looking for. Footer anchors should be used for the stuff people expect to see there, i.e. T&Cs, policies, trust signals, awards, contact us, address, Company No. etc.
-
I don't think there is any hard evidence on them, Rand talks about the footers and manipulation here:
There is evidence on the fact that if they are linking to a page that has already been linked to higher in the code, they count for nothing. Only the first anchor text links count in google's eyes. So unless you're linking to pages that are not within the nav, it's fairly pointless from an SEO point of view.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/results-of-google-experimentation-only-the-first-anchor-text-counts
I think using the Footer for linking to pages already linked to is a waste of time. People use the navigation to find the page they're looking for. Footer anchors should be used for the stuff people expect to see there, i.e. T&Cs, policies, trust signals, awards, contact us, address, Company No. etc.
-
True, but SEOmoz is a bit smaller also and all their important link are in the main menu now. The art of consolidating links so the most important gets the full juice, and then they send their juice to sub pages.
Link Sculpting
-
Yes, that wouldn't be too smart. I agree. I have tested that with 2 of my websites Dutch version linking in footer to English version and vice versa. That impacted the rankings extremely negative from Top 10 to Not in Top 100.
But now I was wondering about the effect internally.
What are your experiences?
-
I agree on that. I couldn't filter a negative effect from the ranking factors either. But I have seen it here or there on SEOmoz (as a side note).
When you check the footer of SEOmoz.org. It used to have these categorized links to some parts on the site. However, if you check the current version of their footer, they only use a few links and certainly don't mention any hot parts on the site, let alone mention keywords.
I have tested it on my own site and it did impact my rankings negatively but I wondered if that was coincidence or not.
-
If those keyword-rich footer links are pointing to other websites...
-
I believe the recently posted new ranking factors says that it is not a negative impact (although I just read it through once quickly). Presuming you are not stuffing links. The footer should not be your XML file copied, but key site categories and pages of interest.
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
-
Can I safely asume that links between subsites on a subdirectories based multisite will be treated as internal links within a single site by Google?
I am building a multisite network based in subdirectories (of the mainsite.com/site1 kind) where the main site is like a company site, and subsites are focused on brands or projects of that company. There will be links back and forth from the main site and the subsites, as if subsites were just categories or pages within the main site (they are hosted in subfolders of the main domain, after all). Now, Google's John Mueller has said: <<as far="" as="" their="" url="" structure="" is concerned,="" subdirectories="" are="" no="" different="" from="" pages="" and="" subpages="" on="" your="" main="" site.="" google="" will="" do="" its="" best="" to="" identify="" where="" sites="" separate="" using="" but="" the="" is="" same="" for="" a="" single="" site,="" you="" should="" assume="" that="" seo="" purposes,="" network="" be="" treated="" one="">></as> This sounds fine to me, except for the part "Google will do its best to identify where sites are separate", because then, if Google establishes that my multisite structure is actually a collection of different sites, links between subsites and mainsite would be considered backlinks between my own sites, which could be therefore considered a link wheel, that is, a kind of linking structure Google doesn't like. How can I make sure that Google understand my multisite as a unique site? P.S. - The reason I chose this multisite structure, instead of hosting brands in categories of the main site, is that if I use the subdirectories based multisite feature I will be able to map a TLD domain to any of my brands (subsites) whenever I'd choose to give that brand a more distinct profile, as if it really was a different website.
Web Design | | PabloCulebras0 -
Do search engines see copy/keywords when it appears only at the bottom of a page?
My client is looking to improve their SEO, and to date I've written meta data and made some initial recommendations. Thing is, on some of their pages, the body copy appears at the bottom of the page, past links and big, splashy images. My question is, will search engines even see that copy to crawl it for keywords? Thanks!
Web Design | | MarcieHill0 -
Does having a Blog link in the top level navigation provide any better SEO value, or would having it in a footer or top navigation work just as good?
Trying to decide on whether placing a link to the blog in our top level navigation would have a better SEO value than just placing it in top or footer navigation. I have an ecommerce site.
Web Design | | RPD0 -
Changing Links that Show Up when I Google Brand (Site) Name
Hi SEOmoz Community, A quick question for you all. I've added an attachment for reference. When I google my brand name, say for example, Applied StemCell, I see six links as well below the description. Oddly though, these links seem to be chosen at random, or at least I'm not sure how Google decides on them. When I click on one of the links that is the company's name, Applied StemCell it brings me to a PDF document! Is there any way I can choose which ones to display there? Thanks! OF2oVVN.png
Web Design | | swzhai0 -
Competitive Analysis: Links & Keywords
I'm noticing that for some key local search terms our company is not ranking in SERPs as I would expect considering it's size relative to the local sites that are ranking. I subscribed to SEOmoz to get a better understanding of what's going on, and haven't figured it out yet. Our site is higher in almost every metric than the sites we're competing with, but our competition consistently ranks higher in organic results for industry standard keywords. The few metrics we're being outranked in are, "Linking C Blocks" and "Page MozTrust" (we're very close to the leader in MozTrust). Are these two metrics enough to account for our companies poor SERP performance or do I need to be paying attention to something else?
Web Design | | thinkWebstoreSEO0 -
Should I nofollow my blog "read more" links?
I have a standard blog index page with entries formatted as such: Blog title Blog excerpt read more link The blog title is linked to the blog post (duh). The "read more" link is also linked to the same blog post, but I put a rel="nofollow" tag on that link because I don't want the SE's thinking "read more" is relevant anchor text. Now, is what I'm doing right? Won't having the read more link as nofollow result in some sort of conflict considering the blog title link is set to follow? Will a nofollow link have a cascading effect on any matching "follow" link? I've frequently read that "read more" should be nofollowed, but I've never once seen anyone address the conflict of having a follow and nofollow link on the same page pointing to the same link. Which one wins? Thanks.
Web Design | | bluekite770 -
How to make Address Text Clickable for Google Map Link for Mobile Device
How do I make the address text on the site a clickable link for mobile devices?
Web Design | | bozzie3110 -
How is link juice split between navigation?
Hey All, I am trying to understand link juice as it relates to duplicate navigation Take for example a site that has a main navigation contained in dropdowns containing 50 links (fully crawl-able and indexable), then in the footer of said page that navigation is repeated so you have a total of 100 links with the same anchor text and url. For simplicity sake will the link juice be divided among those 100 and passed to the corresponding page or does the "1st link rule" still apply and thus only half of the link juice will be passed? What I am getting at is if there was only one navigation menu and the page was passing 50 link juice units then each of the subpages would get passed 1link juice unit right? but if the menu is duplicated than the possible link juice is divided by 100 so only .5 units are being passed through each link. However because there are two links pointing to the same page is there a net of 1 unit? We have several sites that do this for UX reasons but I am trying to figure out how badly this could be hurting us in page sculpting and passing juice to our subpages. Thanks for your help! Cheers.
Web Design | | prima-2535090
