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
-
High Rank and Traffic of low DA and Backlinks
Hi guys, is a pleasure being a part of this community, hope in learning a lot with you guys, i just started a year learning about SEO and it been a big journey. I was looking at some competition of some websites that i been optmizing, and i found a website that called my attention and i cant figure out whats going on, it haves huge traffic but in terms of technicall SEO is really week, and not just this but also in terms of DA and backlinks (most of them spammy - 20 backlinks), the domain in question is bhnews.com.br I notice that doesnt have any social media, not analytics, etc. The only thing that i notice is that there is a website or a company called "BH news" (televesion), but its not related with it, since the type of information that bhnews.com.br presents is "lottery" results. So this kind of situation confuses me a lot, because is a lot of hard work in optmizing a website to rank in google, and than i come a across with this type of website with 20 backlinks (most of anchor or name of domain), and than haves like 2M visits per month and ranks for keywords related with the this type of sites of lottery. Can someone tell me if there is some kind of black seo, or something that is making this rank so high? regards
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jogobicho0 -
Forcing Google to Crawl a Backlink URL
I was surprised that I couldn't find much info on this topic, considering that Googlebot must crawl a backlink url in order to process a disavow request (ie Penguin recovery and reconsideration requests). My trouble is that we recently received a great backlink from a buried page on a .gov domain and the page has yet to be crawled after 4 months. What is the best way to nudge Googlebot into crawling the url and discovering our link?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Choice0 -
Is bad English detected by Google
Hi, I am based in the UK and in a very competitive market - van leasing - and I am thinking about using an Indian SEO company for my ongoing SEO. They have sent me some sample artilces that they have written for link building and the English is not good. Do you think that google can tell the difference between a well written article and a poorly written article? Will the fact that articles are poorly writtem mean we will lose potential value from the link? Any input would be much appreciated. Regards John J
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Johnnyh0 -
Impressions and Clicks down by 200% when everything was doing good
Hi, I started a wordpress website few weeks ago and at the beginning all i did is added about 5 posts almost without any content, only few pages had content, website hardly finished etc.. same time a i went on g+ and received some traffic from there plus about 300 g+ click on my website and i had 20-30 organic visits on a 2 weeks old website, which was not even half done and on top of that with very hard keywords!! Now 3-4 weeks in, I added content and constantly adding more, 1.2k g+ and other things as well like no duplicate titles as well and my impressions and clicks going down massively !! I mean barely 4-5 visits and only from random worthless keywords. I receive daily amount of g+ clicks, plus built some good links as well and getting traffic from there too and organic search is still dying out for me. Any idea??:(
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Sugafree0 -
Powered by/Credit backlinks and nofollow
Pseudo question: I have a website that has 100K pages. On about 50K of those pages I have information that is fed to me via an outside 3rd-party website. Now, I like to give credit where credit is due, so I add a backlink to the website that is feeding me this content. A simple backlink like so: Information provided by: Company ABC Now, this 3rd-party website wants me to remove the nofollow tags from the backlink, but I am very, very skeptical because to me, sending ~50K dofollow backlinks to a single site might make the Google monster upset with me. This 3rd-party site is being very hard-headed about this, to the point where I am thinking of terminating the relationship all together. I digress. Scoured the net before writing this, but couldn't really find anything directly related to my issue. Thoughts? Is a nofollow required here? We're not talking 1 or 2 links here; we're talking tens of thousands (50K is low; it will probably be upwards of 100K when all is said and done as my site has many, many pages). Thanks in advance.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | THB0 -
Negative backlinks
Hi I have heard that penguin penalizes a site for bad backlinks. Do you think that it is true? Do you think that is possible for someone to penalize my website adding my link to some spam website? I'm worried that someone could do it...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | darkanweb0 -
Good link networks?
Hey Mozzers, quick question about link networks. I've identified quite a few, like these: Build My Rank Unique Article Wizard Authority Link Network Article Ranks EZ Article Link Socialadr Linkvana SEO LinkVine Does anyone have experience using any of these? The basic premise is they own or their members own tons of different blogs. You write an article, give it to them, they publish it one one of those blogs. You include a link in your article. Done. They charge a monthly fee to use and all that, so is it worth it? Anyone had any success with them? Finding mixed things on forums online, and since many of their websites like awfully spammy, wanted to poll the Mozzers and get your thoughts.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DanDeceuster0 -
Link Building with links in footer of Word Press Themes- Is This BLack Hat??
I See lots of free word press themes with links in footer like Kids Headphones | Colombia Classifieds | Broadway Tickets Is this a valid white hat link building method? What if the theme looked like a particular industry and the links related to the industry would that be better?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DavidKonigsberg0