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.
How good is a backlink that's in the footer
-
Hello,
The strongest site in our industry (according to domain authority and excluding wikipedia) said that they would put a sitewide link to us in their footer. We're good friends with them.
It would be right next to the copyright.
Our site is nlpca (dot) com
The partner site is nlpu (dot) com
The link will say something like "More NLP Training" with the "NLP" as the link. We're targeting the keyword "NLP"
How much will this move us up for the keyword "NLP"? Right now we're on the 3rd page for that term.
I also want to make sure that it's a white hat move.
Thanks!
-
Frankly, sitewide links offer very little value these days to your overall link-profile. The engines simply don't like them as in a lot of cases they scream manipulation.
You might also be interested to know that according to the folks who contributed to the SEOMoz Ranking Factors, the vast majority said that sitewide links would devalue your overall metrics with varying degrees of severity.
Honestly, I'd try to negotiate a better placement and switch tact.
Best,
Anthony -
Ryan,
I value your opinion and Anthony's too.
I will relay the information to my client.
-
Thank you Anthony,
I've had luck with this in the past since it's sitewide.
but I value the SEOMoz metrics.
Any further information you can provide would be great.
-
Hi Bob.
When you receive a link, there are several ways to weigh it's value. Mainly there is the direct value of users who will see the link and click on it to drive traffic to your site. A second consideration is how the link will help you improve search engine rankings.
In this case, you already have a link from the site from their Resources page. More links from the same site wont improve your number of linking root domains, so it wont diversify your link profile in that regard. Footer links are often not seen and rarely actually used. My question to you is, how often do you think a user might see the link and click on it? I would even suggest you test the idea with your analytics.
How much will this move us up for the keyword "NLP"?
Search engine rankings can move for various reasons without your making any change. With that in mind, I don't believe receiving a footer link from this site will have any positive effect on your rankings. With that said, it can't hurt so you are welcome to obtain the link. I would rather suggest you obtain a link in one of the sidebars, or perhaps a content link in their blogs or elsewhere.
-
Hey Bob,
There are a few considerations you need to keep in mind here.
The main one is whether or not this link is going to serve you any real benefit, especially being hidden away in the footer. It's a given that a link in the footer of the site will not serve anywhere near the same value as a link embedded within relevant and high quality original content. The amount of juice it will pass will be minimal in comparison (if that's the goal here).
The search engines have cottoned on to footer links and I feel they associate them with paid links. Whether they offer any real value from an SEO stand-point is not really a debating point within the industry (for further reading read SEOMoz's 2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors). Put yourself in the shoes of a website visitor, are they going to get any major benefit from a link in the footer? Doubtful. And the SE's know this. It's super easy to identify these links and penalise them accordingly.
If I were you I would go back to your partner and try to negotiate a link with a better placement. Even an link positioned within a nice piece of quality content should offer you more benefit than a link slapped in the footer of the site.
Best,
Anthony
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 Many Backlinks does I need to rank?
A keyword Olehana private label cosmetic company that also my competitor have 4k ref domain for this keyword. So Do I need more than 4k ref domain with anchortext "olehana" Please help me. Thanks.
Link Building | | arainbadami0 -
DA not increased as backlinks generated...
Hi,
Link Building | | p4pakao
I would like to discuss my issue as my site's some backlinks are generated but DA is still there. Can anyone make me understand the reason?0 -
Backlinks from non-relevant site
There's a forum I used to participate in that allows you to include a link to your website in your signature block. I have over 500 posts in the forum so that provides a lot of backlinks to my website. However, I recently decided to remove my website link from my signature for two reasons: The forum is 95-99% dead. Hardly anyone uses it anymore. BTW, the website that houses the forum is still popular within is niche (articles, etc). Just the forum appears to be dead. The website and its forum really have no connection whatsoever to my business. I'm in a completely different niche. However, I have no idea if I've made the right decision. Will removing my signature and the backlinks hurt my site? Or will it help it since the other site really isn't related to mine? Thanks for any thoughts on this!
Link Building | | emh19690 -
Backlinks embedded in posts or backlinks in sidebar?
What's better? A backlink to my site, embedded into a blog post/article? Or a hardlink in the sidebar? The problem with links embedded inside articles, is that when the blog linking to me, gets updated, the articles disappear from first page and I lose the link from home page. How do you deal with this? I also read this: "The best link you can get is from a site ranking #1 for the keyword you want to rank for. It would be great to have the #1 site for a desired keyword linking me even if they are a PR 0 site." Is this right? Thx in advance.
Link Building | | BloggerGuy0 -
Should I Use a Backlink Plugin
One of my clients recently asked me if he should use a Wordpress plugin to create backlinks to his website. He mentioned WP-Syndicator as an example. I just redesigned his website and I'd like to ensure that he gets a bit more traffic than he was before. Should I suggest that he purchase/use a Wordpress backlink plugin? If so does anyone know which is the best one? Not sure if it's necessary, but here is the website I'm referring to http://intouchhome.com
Link Building | | eddie_olivas0 -
Why do we need proxy to so Backlinks?
Does Google knows the IP addresses that the backlinks are created from? if i create 200 backlinks for my site without proxies will google ban my site because it will look like i a the one who create all the backlinks? May i ask how many proxies do you guys need to create around 200 backlinks per day? If i already use the proxies today Can i use the same set of proxies to create backlinks tomorrow? THanks
Link Building | | locoto00071 -
Should we BackLink to Guest Post ?
Hi, I have been actively doing guest blogging for last few weeks . But the page authority , moz Rank and moz Trust of my guest posts appear 0 as those posts have their own pages on blogs with snippets of posts on home page. I wanted to ask if i should backlink to my guest posts to increase the authority, mR and mT of pages. Those posts are already appearing as backlinks in webmaster tools but if i backlink to my posts to increase mR and mT, then will it also increase the juice passed by backlinks in those posts to landing pages on my site ? Thanks,
Link Building | | shaz_lhr0 -
What are "naked backlinks"?
Hello SEOmozers! I have a question for you all. What are "naked backlinks"? Can you also give an example? Thank you! woo aka STPseo
Link Building | | STPseo0