100's of Footer Links... what is the safe play?
-
Hello,
One of my clients wants to know what you guys think is the best solution. He sells 100's of templates a month that have a footer link on it pointing to our homepage.
Anchor links are "keyword" & "Brand Name" Some are different than others.
-
Do we update the templates so those are no-follow links in the footer?
-
Do we just make all the links to: Brand Name and have them follow?
I understand Brand Name is the business name but I am also afraid that Brand name is so close to the money making keyword in the industry and Google might think we are trying to game the system.
Looking for your expert opinions!
-
-
Hey Moosa,
Since the value of footer links is very low anyway, the likelihood that they may be seen as manipulative would be of far more concern to me - no following them is unlikely to make any sort of negative dent in search visibility. It will, however ensure that the site does not become an easy target for Penguin.
Given the business your client is in, I imagine the most important thing for them is bringing new qualified traffic to their site. The potential for referral traffic from a nofollowed link with anchor text properly crafted to reinforce the brand and entice the click should be the prize they have their eye on.
Hope that helps,
Sha
-
The official Google line would be to make them nofollow so it really depends on what your appetite for risk is.
In terms of whether your brand name is actually also a commercial keyword - Google it, and if you're ranking top then in theory it's being recognised as a brand.
In practice you will probably be able to get away with your brand name, or your full website address as the anchor text.
George
-
That's a good one. My first reaction is, give the links a no follow. With that the (brand) name is visible, but the link can not harm you by in case it's on low qualiy websites and or money making keywords.
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
-
301 Re-directing 'empty' domains
Hello, My client had purchased a few domains and 301 re-directed them, pointing to our main website. As far as I am aware the 'empty domains' are brand related but no content has ever been displayed on them, and I doubt they have much authority. The issue here is that we took a dive in ranking for our main keyword, I had a look on ahrefs and found the below: | www.empty-domain/our-keyword | 30 | 19 | 1 | fb 0
Technical SEO | | SO_UK
G+ 0
in 4 | REDIRECT 301 TO www.main-domain/our-keyword | 8 Feb '175 d | The ranking dip happened at the same time as the re-direct was re-discovered / re-crawled. Could the 'empty' URL in question been causing us any issues? I understand that this is terrible practice for 301 redirects, I was hoping someone in the community could shed light on any possible solution for this.0 -
How google bot see's two the same rel canonicals?
Hi, I have a website where all the original URL's have a rel canonical back to themselves. This is kinda like a fail safe mode. It is because if a parameter occurs, then the URL with the parameter will have a canonical back to the original URL. For example this url: https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ has this canonical: https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ which is the same since it's an original URL This url https://www.example.com/something/page/1/?parameter has this canonical https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ like i said before, parameters have a rel canonical back to their original url's. SO: https://www.example.com/something/page/1/?parameter and this https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ both have the same canonical which is this https://www.example.com/something/page/1/ Im telling you all that because when roger bot tried to crawl my website, it gave back duplicates. This happened because it was reading the canonical (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/) of the original url (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/) and the canonical (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/) of the url with the parameter (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/?parameter) and saw that both were point to the same canonical (https://www.example.com/something/page/1/)... So, i would like to know if google bot treats canonicals the same way. Because if it does then im full of duplicates 😄 thanks.
Technical SEO | | dos06590 -
Google's Omitted Results - Attempt to De-Index
We're trying to get webpages from our QA site out of Google's index. We've inserted the NOINDEX tags. Google now shows only 3 results (down from 196,000), however, they offer a link to "show omitted results" at the bottom of the page. (A) Did we do something wrong? or (B) were we successful with our NOINDEX but Google will offer to show omitted results anyway? Please advise! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | BVREID0 -
On-Page Report Says 'F', and I'm Confoozled As to Why
I'm primarily interested in how we failed in our "Broad Keyword Usage in Title" category. The Keyword Pair we're gunnin' for is: "Mac Windows" Our current page title is: "CrossOver: Windows on Mac and Linux with the easiest and most affordable emulator - CodeWeavers" This is, I grant, ugly. However, bear with me. SEOMoz Report Card says "Easy Fix!" and suggests: "Employ the keyword in the page title, preferrably as the first words in the element." I humbly submit that "Mac" and "Windows" IS in the page title. So what am I missing? Is it the placement of the words relative to each other, or relative to the start of the sentence? Or is the phrase "CrossOver:" somehow blocking the rest of the sentence from being read? Are colons evil? I'm genuinely mystified as to why (from a structural standpoint) our existing title tag is failing this test, and I'd be delighted for answers and/or feedback. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | CodeWeavers0 -
ECommerce Site, URL's, Canonical and Tracking Referral Traffic
I'm very, very new to eCommerce websites that employ many different URL's to track referral traffic. I have a client that has 18 different URL's that land on the Home Page in order to track traffic from different referral sources. For example: http://erasedisease.com/?ref=abot - Tracks traffic from an affiliate source http://erasedisease.com/?ref=FB01 - Tracks traffic from a FB Ad http://erasedisease.com/?ref=sas&SSAID=289169 - Tracks more affiliate traffic ...and the list goes on and on. My first question is do you think this could hinder our Google rankings? SEOMoz Crawl doesn't show any Duplicate Content Errors, so I guess that's good. I've just been reading a lot about Canonical Url's and eCommerce sites, but I'm not sure if this is a situation where I'd want to use some kind of canonical plugin for this Wordpress website or not. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much!!
Technical SEO | | Linwright0 -
If two links from one page link to another, how can I get the second link's anchor text to count?
I am working on an e-commerce site and on the category pages each of the product listings link to the product page twice. The first is an image link and then the second is the product name. I want to get the anchor text of the second link to count. If I no-follow the image link will that help at all? If not is there a way to do this?
Technical SEO | | JordanJudson0 -
Handling '?' in URLs.
Adios! (or something), I've noticed in my SEOMoz campaign that I am getting duplicate content warnings for URLs with extensions. For example: /login.php?action=lostpassword /login.php?action=register etc. What is the best way to deal with these type of URLs to avoid duplicate content penelties in search engines? Thanks 🙂
Technical SEO | | craigycraig0 -
Switching ecommerce CMS's - Best Way to write URL 301's and sub pages?
Hey guys, What a headache i've been going through the last few days trying to make sure my upcoming move is near-perfect. Right now all my urls are written like this /page-name (all lowercase, exact, no forward slash at end). In the new CMS they will be written like this: /Page-Name/ (with the forward slash at the end). When I generate an XML sitemap in the new ecomm CMS internally it lists the category pages with a forward slash at the end, just like they show up through out the CMS. This seems sloppy to me, but I have no control over it. Is this OK for SEO? I'm worried my PR 4, well built ecommerce website is going to lose value to small (but potentially large) errors like this. If this is indeed not good practice, is there a resource about not using the forward slash at the end of URLS in sitemaps i can present to the community at the platform? They are usually real quick to make fixes if something is not up to standards. Thanks in advance, -First Time Ecommerce Platform Transition Guy
Technical SEO | | Hyrule0