Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Backlinks in Footer - The good, the bad, the ugly.
-
I tried adding onto a question already listed, however that question stayed where it was and didn't go anywhere close to somewhere others would see it, since it was from 2012.
I have a competitor who is completely new, just popped onto the SERPs in December 2015. Now I've wondered how they jumped up so fast without really much in the way of user content.
Upon researching them, I saw they have 200 backlinks but 160 of them are from their parent company, and of all places coming from the footer of their parent company. So they get all of the pages of that domain, as backlinks.
Everything I've read has told me not to do this, it's going to harm the site bad if anything will discount the links.
I'm in no way interested in doing what they did, even if it resulted in page 1 ( which it has done for them ), since I believe that it's only a matter of time, and once that time comes, it won't be a 3 month recovery, it might be worse.
What do you all think?
My question or discussion is why hasn't this site been penalized yet, will they be penalized and if not, why wouldn't they be?
**What is the good, bad and ugly of backlinks in the footer: **
- Good
- Bad
- Ugly
-
There are plenty of very large sites doing this--it's natural for them to link to the sites that they own. It all really comes down to the sites' link profiles, and if their link profile is diversified enough. If those links are the only links (or a large portion of) the links that they have, there might be an issue. But if the parent site is trusted enough, has a high enough Domain Authority, then most likely the site won't be penalized for the parent site linking to them.
-
Here's my take. Some footer bests aren't necessarily links.
**What is the good, bad and ugly of backlinks in the footer: **
- Good: Links are like a mini sitemap. Footer is a very useful addition to the page above it. Features heavily used features of the site that benefit the page by being available in the footer as well. NAP. Anti-Spam. If links are external, they're to parent or partner companies within the same overall company.
- Bad: Spammy. Tries to link to every page on the site with keyword heavy text. Broken links. Obvious paid links to external sites.
- **Ugly: **Low utility. Never updated. Service provider 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
-
How good/bad the exit intent pop-ups? What is Google's perspective?
Hi all, We have launched the exit intent pop-ups on our website where a pop-up will appear when the visitor is about to leave the website. This will trigger when the mouse is moved to the top window section; as an attempt by the visitor to close the window. We see a slight ranking drop post this pop-up launch. As the pop-up is appearing just before someone leaves the website; does this making Google to see as if the user left because of the pop-up and penalizing us? What is your thoughts and suggestions on this? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz1 -
Site Footer Links Used for Keyword Spam
I was on the phone with a proposed web relaunch firm for one of my clients listening to them talk about their deep SEO knowledge. I cannot believe that this wouldn’t be considered black-hat or at least very Spammy in which case a client could be in trouble. On this vendor’s site I notice that they stack the footer site map with about 50 links that are basically keywords they are trying to rank for. But here’s the kicker shown by way of example from one of the themes in the footer: 9 footer links:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RosemaryB
Top PR Firms
Best PR Firms
Leading PR Firms
CyberSecurity PR Firms
Cyber Security PR Firms
Technology PR Firms
PR Firm
Government PR Firms
Public Sector PR Firms Each link goes to a unique URL that is basically a knock-off of the homepage with a few words or at the most one sentences swapped out to include this footer link keyword phrase, sometimes there is a different title attribute but generally they are a close match to each other. The canonical for each page links back to itself. I simply can’t believe Google doesn’t consider this Spammy. Interested in your view.
Rosemary0 -
How to Get Backlinks to a Coupon Code Website
Hello Guys, I run a coupon code website, which by its very nature does not contain the most compelling of content. As you can probably understand, not many people are going to want to link to a page which lists a number of coupons relating to a specific online retailer. I am really struggling to come up with new and innovative ways of attracting links and wondered if anybody was in a similar position to me or could offer some advice. Would love to get some feedback. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Marc-FIMA1 -
Finding and Removing bad backlinks
Ok here goes. Over the past 2 years our traffic and rankings have slowly declined, most importantly, for keywords that we ranked #1 and #2 at for years. With the new Penguin updates this year, we never saw a huge drop but a constant slow loss. My boss has tasked me with cleaning up our bad links and reshaping our link profile so that it is cleaner and more natural. I currently have access to Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools, SEOMoz, and Link Builder. 1)What is the best program or process for identifying bad backlinks? What exactly am I looking for? Too many links from one domain? Links from Low PR or low “Trust URL” sites? I have gotten conflicting information reading about all this on the net, with some saying that too many good links(high PR) can be unnatural without some lower level PR links, so I just want to make sure that I am not asking for links to be removed that we need to create or maintain our link profile. 2)What is the best program or process for viewing our link profile and what exactly am I looking for? What constitutes a healthy link profile after the new google algorithm updates? What is the best way to change it? 3)Where do I start with this task? Remove spammy links first or figure out or profile first and then go after bad links? 4)We have some backlinks that are to our old .aspx that we moved to our new platform 2 years ago, there are quite a few (1000+). Some of these pages were redirected and some the redirects were broken at some point. Is there any residual juice in these backlinks still? Should we fix the broken redirects, or does it do nothing? My boss says the redirects wont do anything now that google no longer indexes the old pages but other people have said differently. Whats the deal should we still fix the redirects even though the pages are no longer indexed? I really appreciate any advice as basically if we cant get our site and sales turned around, my job is at stake. Our site is www.k9electronics.com if you want to take a look. We just moved hosts so there are some redirect issues and other things going on we know about.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | k9byron0 -
Do shady backlinks actually damage ranking?
That is, it looks like a whole bunch of sites got smacked around the penguin/panda updates, but is this by virtue of actually being hurt by google's algorithms, or by virtue of simply not being helped "as much"? That is, was it a matter of the sites just not having any 'quality' backlinks, having relied on things google no longer liked, which would result in not having as much to push them to the top? That is, they would have been in the same position had they not had those shoddy practices? Or was google actively punishing those sites? That is, are they worse off for having those shoddy practices? I guess the reason I ask is I'm somewhat terrified of going "out there" to get backlinks -- worst case scenario: would it just not do much to help, or would it actually hurt? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | yoni450 -
Article submission, and how to build backlinks for Ecommerce? [HELP]
Hi guys, I have a question, for high quality backlinks apparently you go to these article websites where you submit your site such as Ezine etc etc, however is it just one article you submit to these as it'll look like duplicate content? Also can I have it on my site first? How does it work? Also I run an ecommerce website, how can I build backlinks to each product, theres over 200+ products and 1.6k subcategories. I would like to rank for as many as possible but getting an SEO company to do this would cost to much. Any ideas on how I should go about it?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | InkCartridgesFast1 -
How do you deal with spammy backlinks?
One of the web designers I work with asked me to do a preliminary site assessment on a small business website. The owner of the business had a falling out with his previous web designer and moved over to the one I work with earlier this year. The site has been redesigned but when analyzing the back links I discovered that the previous designer had created directories to create backlinks to the page. The PR 0 links from the site number about 150 and are from unrelated topic pages. So, it made me wonder, how much damage can spammy backlinks do? What is the best practice to deal with spammy backlinks if you find them?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TheARKlady0 -
What are good sources to buy traffic and video views?
I am looking into buying traffic for a website and I'd like to know if anyone has had a positive experience doing so. What are the best companies that sell traffic? I also want to buy video views. This is a trickier question. I upload the videos to YouTube and use the embed code on my website. I want the paid video views on my site so I get the traffic and YT gets the video view. Any suggestions? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Storitz0