Hi,

No, there is no good reason to do this. For linking purposes, this will do absolutely nothing for you. Sitewide and Footer links are mostly just ignored or devalued by Google, but could end up with you looking spammy.

Rand actually did a Whiteboard Friday about this very subject last year.

https://moz.com/blog/links-headers-footers-navigation-impact-seo

-Andy

Hi,

I have never heard of any issues with this in either case. Google can see past a right click block with ease, but why do you think this might be hurting his traffic? Because of scraping tools and copying content? It isn't something I would really suggest doing unless there is an exceptionally good reason.

In fact, here is John Mueller endorsing an answer over on Google's forums.

-Andy

Hi Lisa,

1. Is it worth keeping all these (they want to add more) domains or let them expire?

If they are keeping them to help ensure brand security, then this is very popular and no harm in keeping them.

2. All the purchased domains are online - is there any point (they redirect with a 301)?

There is probably not a lot of point in all of them being live and pointing towards the main site as there will be no SEO benefit in doing this. If the sites were live and each had a site on there, it would be a different story and one that would end in a penalty.

If they are hoping to gain any SEO benefit from doing this, then they will be wasting their time. By all means they can buy them, but if what they have is delivering nothing beneficial (and I suspect they aren't), then I would just take them all down. It is more common to have a .co.uk and .com (and perhaps a few others) pointing to one key domain to capture traffic that types it wrong, but outside of this, it's a bit of a dead duck.

-Andy

I'm going to chime in with Rand's Whiteboard friday on Link Building Outreach as it covers so many important factors related to offpage link acquisition.

Try and create content and articles that are above and beyond what others have in your niche. Give people a reason to really want to grant a link because they feel it is beneficial.

-Andy

Hi Lise,

It isn't best to do this because Google won't give you any benefit for doing so (or very minimal at best), but what you need to do is to redirect the old URL to the new one (if you haven't already) as this will show Google that there is a new page in place. Otherwise you are just starting with a new page.

Don't change it back, but don't do this to other pages, unless you are making them friendly URL's.

-Andy

Hi Sigurd,

A 503 seems like an odd choice in this circumstance - is this something that the eCommerce software dictates, or are there options for this?

A 503 is service unavailable and isn't something I would expect to see on a page that has expired. There are a number of alternatives depending on the product & niche. For Google to be seeing thousands of 503's might make it look like the site is having problems.

If a page really must go, then it should be a 404 / 410, or a 301 to a close alternative, but not a 503.

Are there pointers that show these are causing issues with the site's SERP's?

-Andy

OK, so if you have duplicated the content on each TLD, then this needs resolving. However, if you are just pointing say the .com to a .org, then this is absolutely fine.

If this content is live on each domain and it isn't intended for a different country, then this is a big no-no. You would normally handle this with HREFLANG, but, there is something to think about.

You could noindex / disallow access to all but one website so that Google can't see lots of duplicates, but the sites are still going to be available to browse for a user.

-Andy

Hi Robin,

There is no real problem in what you want to do. Medium is a great way to get your content in-front of more people, as is Pulse.

This is what Google has to say on the matter...

• Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you'd prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content.

I would say go for it - have seen this done many, many times and without any issue.

-Andy

Don't forget that the description has no effect on the SEO. Tis is just for those reading the search results. I would suspect that with a site the size of amazon, descriptions will be made up from algorithms, or a description pulled from a database. Might even be something stock that the manufacturer supplies them with. Regards, Andy