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?
-
Hi Joel,
you might want to consider reading questions more carefully before you reply.
This has nothing to do with removing links but building an distributing a theme with links in it!
![😕](https://moz.com/community/q/assets/plugins/nodebb-plugin-emoji/emoji/android/1f615.png?v=5e11mjijs33 ":\")
-
If you put a base64 obfuscated link in the footer of your WordPress then I'll hunt you down and gut you like a fish ಠ_ಠ
The problem with those footer links is that they look spammy to both users and to search engines. Your theme could end up on all manner of sites with links to things they're irrelevant too, even if you try and skin the theme to be relevant.
Ultimately it's no longer a good way of building links, not least of all because people have such a huge choice of themes now even exceptional ones don't find many homes. Plus, even if you make a condition of using the theme, a lot of people are going to remove them.
As Riggz said it would only really not look bad if you were a design company, but it's been abused so much in the past I would think that they're almost entirely discounted by search engines.
-
I've actually wondered the same thing... In that particular example, it seems they are injecting a wide variety of keywords into the footer, and it looks kind of fishy.
In general the only link I put in the footer (beside quick links to less visited areas of the website) would be credit for the web company in some way, "Site by X", 'Website Design by X", "Hosted on X CMS" (only using 1 of these per site).
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
-
New un-natural links to my website that i didnt create.. and lots of them!
Hi There In the last few months my search organic traffic has gone down and i am looking into links to my website through webmaster tools. It looks like there is some sort of automated robot that is building new links to my website at a rate of 5 per week! All are spammy, directory links. It looks like this has been going on for a few months now. I have no idea how to find and stop this. But i have a feeling this might explain why my traffic is down. ALSO non of these links are in MOZ Open site explorer or Majestic SEO.. they are just showing as just discovered in webmaster tools. I am assuming that means its pretty accurate ?! ALL help is appreciated! Thanks! Paula
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Pixelstorm0 -
Bot or Virus Creating Bad Links?
Hey Everyone, We are getting ready to engage a client for some potential marketing/SEO so in preparing for this have ran the site through OpenSiteExplorer. The site is relatively new and there are only two links under the inbound links section. They are relevant and add value, no issues there. Here is where it get strange. When I look under the 'Just Discovered' section there are many (hundreds) new links going back about a month. Virtually all of them have the anchor text 'Louis Vuitton outlet'. Now the client swears he has not engaged anyone for black hat SEO, so wondering who could possibly be creating these links. They do sell some Louis Vuitton items on the site, so I'm wondering if it is possible that some spam bot has picked up the site and began to spam the web with links to the clients site. So far today, 50 or so new links have been created with said anchor text and the clients root URL all on very poor quality, some foreign blog sites. Would like to find out why this is happening and put a stop to it for obvious reasons. Has anyone experienced something similar? Could this be a bot? Or maybe someone with an axe to grind against the client? Anyone could be doing this on their own, but just seems strange for it to be happening to a new site that does not even rank highly at the moment. Any advice or info is greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Whebb0 -
Negative SEO to inner page: remove page or disavow links?
Someone decided to run a negative-SEO campaign, hitting one of the inner pages on my blog 😞 I noticed the links started to pile up yesterday but I assume there will be more to come over the next few days. The targeted page is of little value to my blog, so the question is: should I remove the affected page (hoping that the links won't affect the entire site) or to submit a disavow request? I'm not concerned about what happens to the affected page, but I want to make sure the entire site doesn't get affected as a result of the negative-SEO. Thanks in advance. Howard
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | howardd0 -
I think competitors are trying to remove my links! Have you ever seen this?
Here is the email my sales rep received today (what can we do to combat this?): From: Jaqueline carol [mailto:jaqueline-carol@hotmail.com]
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | pbhatt
Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2013 12:57 AM
To:
Subject: I NEED your help - PLEASE Hi, Due to the latest GoogIe update we are working on cleaning up the links to our website . There fore we would like to kindly ask you to remove our link from your page. link details: URL: We believe that it would help both sides to rank up higher in Google and not get penalized during the future Google updates.
Please remove my link at the earliest and notify me about the same. Thank you for your cooperation. Best Regards, Jaquelinecarol1 -
Opinions sought on outbound Links page.
Hello Forum, I'm about the remove my outbound Links page at: http://www.pictureframe.com.au/---obs--picture-frames-links.html I think that Google could be assessing this page as a link scheme, ie: I-link-you-if-you-link me. I haven't received any messages from Google about this but I think the page may be devaluing my site. What do you guys~gals think? Thank you for any and all feedback Paul the Picture Framer
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Picframer0 -
Link idea? good or bad?
OK so my website ranks fairly well for keywords i would say 50-60 % are ranking in the top 3 my DA is 15 and PA is 28 I have a few other sites that i blog on that i own they have a DA of 11 and PA of 20 i was thinking of just guest posting on those using a keyword Anchor text that im not ranking for and seeing what that would do. I was thinking of creating a few other sites and just blog about random stuff for 3-6 months generate traffic and start guest posting redirecting links back towards me. Is this bad?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | gslc0 -
Is it bad to no follow all External LInks at the same time?
I am working on more than 40 EMDs. They are good quality brand sites but they all are interlinked to each other through footer links, side bar links. (and they dont have much of linking root domains) Now Some of those sites have been renovated with new templates and these new sites has very few external links (links going out to our own sites) but some of these old sites has 100s of external links (all these external links of course link to our own sites). But anyways, we are planning to no follow all those external links (links that are linking to our own sites) slowly to avoid penalty? question is, can it be bad to implement no follow to all those links on those sites at the same time?Will Google see it as something fishy? (I don't think so) Also, Is it good strategy to no follow all of them? (I think it is) What you guys think ?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Personnel_Concept0 -
How to idesntify "inorganic" links
I am intending to remove spammy link of my website http://cellspyexpert.com/ which has been ranking well but I noticed a sudden drop in its ranking. I took a lot of care while building links, I tried to get links from relevant high authority websites with high page rank. I used profiling and guest blogging method only and never participated in any link scheme but received following message in google webmaster tools " Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://www.cellspyexpert.com/" I got this message on 19<sup>th</sup> Sep and ranking dropped on 6<sup>th</sup> Oct 1- Is this EMD issue?? I am pretty sure it is not because of EMD (Exact match domain) as I have been using phrase match, brand name+phrase and other anchor texts. I used exact match also but only 2%. 2- If it is bad quality, inorganic link issue?? Then I am intending to remove inorganic links so that I could send reconsideration request but facing problem in detecting inorganic links. Please advise!!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shaz_lhr0