Multilingual Sitewide Links
-
Multilingual links in the footer section is being counted as backlink and we are getting tons of backlinks from all the 7 lingual websites.
Is there a solution where we eliminate these links and still having the option to navigate to other lingual pages?
-
Without any indicators that Google 'do' think the links are spammy, I wouldn't worry about this too much. If you start to notice performance issues which you can isolate to these footer links, then I'd no-follow them right away
Usually site-wide links are only an issue between different domains, and even then - only if it's not a multi-domain site. A multi-domain site is usually where you have exactly the same site with linguistic differences, spread across multiple domains (so instead of having site.com/fr/ and site.com/en/, you have site.fr and site.co.uk). As long as the templates are highly, highly similar and Google begins linking the 'brand-entity' across those sites, there shouldn't be a problem
Lot's of sitewide links placed in footers across the web (cross-domain) are paid for links to manipulate SEO rankings. Those are bad. If your links are 'editorial' in nature (e.g: the site owner or editor decided they were required for user benefit) then I wouldn't be so concerned. There's always the chance Google's algorithm could get it wrong, and you could eventually have a problem
What you need to decide is, would you rather have some small performance issues now (by removing the links or no-following them) and prevent any further 'possible' action in the future? Or would you rather take a small risk, and keep your results solid. No one 100% knows how Google's algorithm(s) work (not even Googlers). As such, there are elements of chance at play here and only you can decide what you are happy with:
A) Undo or no-follow the links now for a high chance of mild devaluation now and some affected results, but it will almost 100% stop any site-wide linking penalty (which could wipe out all results) from occurring. The damage of that would be devastating, but the chance of it occurring in the first place is low
B) Leave the links as they are. Experience no mild devaluations or performance issues at all, for now. But possibly in the future, you get struck with a penalty and lose everything. The chances of that seem very low, but if it does happen... ouch
Sometimes both your choices are less than ideal. But you still have to choose! If it were me, I think (with the information which you have supplied thusfar) I'd leave it alone for now (but watch performance like a hawk)
-
It was just a suspicion that google "might" think them as spammy.
Should I be even concerned about these?
Does backlinks from multilingual pages of our own website is common?
-
If your own links are being interpreted as link-spam and causing problems, then yes I am certain. If however your suspicions in that area are incorrect, then no it would be a bad idea. It depends upon your confidence in your evaluation of the situation at hand
Without evidence (performance impacts) that these links are harming you, I'd hold back. In which case, you can just leave them as they are and there's no need for 'any' action (this question becomes moot)
I assumed that your reason for waning to 'eliminate these links' was that you feared the SEO repercussions of leaving them (link spam). If you do feel that they are harming your site from an SEO POV, then yes - no-follow them across the board. However if your assumption in that area is wrong, you could see problems (so think hard on it!)
-
Hey,
Thanks for replying. Are you sure nofollowing own links is a good idea?
-
There actually is! If you're worried that Google might see the links as 'manipulative' but you still need them for UX, then all you have to do is to is inject the individual links (in your footer / template) with rel="nofollow". Google will then discount the links from their algorithm
Note that if you are wrong and Google sees the links as valid and they are helping all your sites interconnect better (in terms of SEO authority) - then you could see some tail-off. Hope this helps
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
-
Broken URL Links
Hi everyone, I have a question regarding broken URL links on my website. Late last year I move my site from an old platform to Shopify, and now have broken URL links giving out 4xx errors. When I look at Moz Pro>Campaigns>Insights>links, I can see the top broken URL links, however there is a difference if copy & paste URL directly from Moz Pro and by Export CSV file. For example below, If I copy and paste links direct from Moz Pro, it has the “http://” in front as below: http://www.thehairhub.com.au/WebRoot/ecshared01/Shops/thehairhub/57F3/1D8F/D244/C675/E27D/AC10/003F/35AD/manic-panic-colours.jpg But when I export the list of links as an CSV file, the http:// is removed. www.thehairhub.com.au/WebRoot/ecshared01/Shops/thehairhub/57F3/1D8F/D244/C675/E27D/AC10/003F/35AD/manic-panic-colours.jpg Another Example below: By copy & paste URL direct from Moz Pro
Technical SEO | | johnwall
http://thehairhub.com.au/Shop-Brands/Vitafive-CPR/CPR-Rescue By export CSV file.
thehairhub.com.au/Shop-Brands/Vitafive-CPR/CPR-Rescue Which one do I use to enter into the “Redirect From” field in Shopify URL Redirects? Do I need to have the http:// in front of the URL? Or is it not required for redirects to work? Kind Regards, John Wall
The Hair Hub0 -
Spammy nofollow links
Hello, One of our clients - a cleaning business - has a heck of a lot of spammy nofollow links pointing to their site. The majority of the links are from comments or 'pingbacks', most with the anchor text 'cheap nfl jerseys' or 'cyber monday ugg boots'. After researching the subject of spammy nofollow links, it seems there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the negative affect these could have on your SEO efforts. So I guess my question to the community is: if your site was suddenly hit by a plethora of spammy nofollow links, what would you do and why? Cheers, Lewis
Technical SEO | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Unnatural links to your site--impacts links
Hi, I just recive a "nice" Massage at my WMT- Unnatural links to your site—impacts links _Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. Some links may be outside of the webmaster’s control, so for this incident we are taking targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole. Learn more._Did someone here came across any massage like this before?if so, any suggestion on what to so next?Whould love for some help! Thanks
Technical SEO | | Tit0 -
Multilingual blogs and site structure
Hi everyone, I have a question about multilingual blogs and site structure. Right now, we have the typical subfolder localization structure. ex: domain.com/page (english site) domain.com/ja/page (japanese site) However, the blog is a slightly more complicated. We'd like to have english posts available in other languages (as many of our users are bilinguals). The current structure suggests we use a typical domain.com/blog or domain.com/ja/blog format, but we have issues if a Japanese (logged in) user wants to view an English page. domain.com/blog/article would redirect them to domain.com/ja/blog/article thus 404-ing the user if the post doesn't exist in the alternate language. One suggestion (that I have seen on sites such as etsy/spotify is to add a /en/ to the blog area: ex domain.com/en/blog domain.com/ja/blog Would this be the correct way to avoid this issue? I know we could technically work around the 404 issue, but I don't want to create duplicate posts in /ja/ that are in English or visa versa. Would it affect the rest of the site if we use a /en/ subfolder just for the blog? Another option is to use: domain.com/blog/en domain.com/blog/ja but I'm not sure if this alternative is better. Any help would be appreciated!
Technical SEO | | Seiyav0 -
How to control link flow on a webshop
I am looking for a best practice link structure for a webshop. Say you run a webshop where the front page should rank for 1-2 keywords and then there are 5-10 categories which are more popular and has a higher profit than the remaining 20-50 categories. Will it be wise to let the 20-50 categories link to the 5-10 more profitable categories if possible or should the structure just treat all the categories as equal and hence not let any link juice flow from the less profitable categories up to the more profitable categories. I hope the question is clear enough. Also if you could share any thoughts on how you structure your webshops it would be great. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | loevgaard0 -
Internal Linking
Where is the best information on internal linking. I'm so confused and everything I read says something different. Ahhhh Thanks
Technical SEO | | meardna770 -
External Links from own domain
Hi all, I have a very weird question about external links to our site from our own domain. According to GWMT we have 603,404,378 links from our own domain to our domain (see screen 1) We noticed when we drilled down that this is from disabled sub-domains like m.jump.co.za. In the past we used to redirect all traffic from sub-domains to our primary www domain. But it seems that for some time in the past that google had access to crawl some of our sub-domains, but in december 2010 we fixed this so that all sub-domain traffic redirects (301) to our primary domain. Example http://m.jump.co.za/search/ipod/ redirected to http://www.jump.co.za/search/ipod/ The weird part is that the number of external links kept on growing and is now sitting on a massive number. On 8 April 2011 we took a different approach and we created a landing page for m.jump.co.za and all other requests generated 404 errors. We added all the directories to the robots.txt and we also manually removed all the directories from GWMT. Now 3 weeks later, and the number of external links just keeps on growing: Here is some stats: 11-Apr-11 - 543 747 534 12-Apr-11 - 554 066 716 13-Apr-11 - 554 066 716 14-Apr-11 - 554 066 716 15-Apr-11 - 521 528 014 16-Apr-11 - 515 098 895 17-Apr-11 - 515 098 895 18-Apr-11 - 515 098 895 19-Apr-11 - 520 404 181 20-Apr-11 - 520 404 181 21-Apr-11 - 520 404 181 26-Apr-11 - 520 404 181 27-Apr-11 - 520 404 181 28-Apr-11 - 603 404 378 I am now thinking of cleaning the robots.txt and re-including all the excluded directories from GWMT and to see if google will be able to get rid of all these links. What do you think is the best solution to get rid of all these invalid pages. moz1.PNG moz2.PNG moz3.PNG
Technical SEO | | JacoRoux0 -
Broken Inner Links - Tool Recommendations?
Do you have any recommendations for tools that scan an entire website and report broken inner links? I run several UGC centered websites and broken inner links, and external, is an issue. Being that these websites are several hundred thousand pages large, I am not really all that excited about running software on my desktop (xenu link sleuth for example). Any online solutions you could recommend would be great!
Technical SEO | | uderic0