Footer link to home page?
-
Quick question - is it a best practice to add a footer link on each page of a website that points back to your home page, with the anchor text being your official brand name?
-
There is of course a difference between hiding text and being user friendly.
If you read Google's policy on hidden text, you'll see there is no mention of this method. The link isn't downsized to 1px, nor is it impossible to see for humans. So I don't agree Erica, on this instance
That would be totally different if we'd do this with more text than just one (brand name) word, reducing visibility, placing [Viagra-text] behind the logo/image that has nothing to do with viagra, etc
-
agreed Erica
-
not sure that's its a problem to do it - there are thousands of respectable sites out there with footer navigation that includes a link to the home page - this is no different than one link with the brand name in it.
-
I'd be careful about hiding text. Google doesn't like that.
-
I wouldn't put links to your own brand name in the footer.... more like in the header or horizontal navigation.
-
yeah I think there is debate as to whether the actual text link (hidden with CSS) is more powerful than the img alt text (which has the brand name in it now). Maybe I'll test with both and see what works best.
-
I understand, no problem
In this scenario I would actually link to the page with the brand name as anchor. But I wouldn't put it in the footer. With a simple tweak in your css file, you can make a text link and still get the logo up in the top left.
Can't reproduce it right now (not a css expert) but I know it works because I've used it before.
-
Hey man - yeah, logo links back. Main purpose of footer link would be to sure up the internal linking that signals the engines that the home page should rank for the brand name. Background here is that I am actually dealing with a site that I took over from another SEO. He had a footer link on each page linking back to the home page with just the brand name as the anchor text. My client recently went through a name change which included a domain change as well. The other "wrench" in this one is that the new name is not extremely unique, and is basically the product name of another huge corporations flagship product. Sorry I can't provide specifics on the actual names. I only give that background to explain why I won't "easily rank for my brand name" in this specific situation.
-
No.
You'll easily rank for your brand name, so there's no need to do that.
Footer links are an old practice. They aren't used a lot for navigation and thus search engines will not value those kinds of links a lot. (Read: almost none)
There's also a lot of writing about the fact that only the first link to certain link gets "counted". You probably have the logo in the top left directing to the home page? So that will cancel out the footer links' use.
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 can i check which inbound links to my site go to 404 pages?
I have external links coming into my site going to 404 pages, but i cant seem to find a way to search all broken links pointed at my website.
On-Page Optimization | | NickJPearse0 -
Combining products - edit existing product page or 301 redirect to new page?
We want to combine existing products - e.g. 'hand lotion' and 'body lotion' will become 'hand & body lotion'. As such, we'll need to combine the two product pages into one. What would be the best route to take in terms of SEO to do this? My initial reaction is to create a new product page and then 301 or 302 redirect the old products to the new product page depending on if the change is permanent or temporary. Would you agree? Or am I missing something?
On-Page Optimization | | SwankyApple1 -
Internal Linking
If i link page A to page B then link page B back to page A would this have less effect than linking page A to page B only? Also are their any good resources for learning internal linking best practise? Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | Bossandy0 -
Wordpress Post as Slideshow - One long page vs many short pages?
We are working on implementing a slideshow format for some of the posts on a website, and it appears that using this format breaks a long post into several shorter pages. That's what we want from a user experience standpoint, but are wondering if there are negative SEO implications from having the content broken up in this way, and whether search engines will view it as one longer page or several very short pages? Here is an example: http://www.forthebestrate.com/10-cheap-ideas-for-summer-fun/ Thanks for the help!
On-Page Optimization | | ILM_Marketing0 -
Too Many On-Page Links
Hello. So, my SEO team has worked very hard to finally resolve RogerBot/GoogleBot specific Crawl Errors either manually or programmatically can be fixed for our Budget Blinds USA Pro Campaign. We've done a good job even if a lot of it came from Robots.txt file entries as this was the most efficient way our client chose to do it. Good news is most of it is CMS configuration and not bad site architecture. That being said our next big volume of Crawl Errors is "Too Many On-Page Links". Our Moz DomainRank is 61. Our client, on this new version of the website, added a large nav-based footer which has duplicate links from the Header Main Navigation. I believe our solution is to put in No-Follow Metatags at the Footer Link Level, so we don't zap Page Authority by over-dividing as you recommend. Is this the best way to resolve this? Is there any risk in this? Or is a 61 DomainRank high enough for RogerBot and GoogleBot to crawl these anyway? Please advise,
On-Page Optimization | | Aviatech0 -
Internal Followed Links and Total Internal Links as 1
It is showing Internal Followed Links and Total Internal Links as 1 in OpenSiteExplorer Tool http://www.expresscasket.com/ http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons?site=www.expresscasket.com Not able to understand and identify the problem and fix it. But when i check in google webmasters tool, it is showing lots of internal links. Does it differ those internal links and your trace of internal links
On-Page Optimization | | expresscasket0 -
Seo Moz says there are 124 links on this page - do you see it?
I'm look at the report under Crawl Diagnostics Summary/Too Many On-Page Links It says there are 124 links on this page. I don't see it?! do you? http://www.kisswedding.com/blog/category/garden-wedding-ideas/
On-Page Optimization | | annasusmiles0 -
Too many On-Page Links on a WP based Website
Hi, I've already browsed through various of the Q&As on the "too many On-Page links" issue, but I would really need some advice concerning a WP Site with a dropdown navigation. As outlined in the on-page report, every site has about 180 outgoing links, which pretty much is the number of site featured in the navigation. Even though the 100 link limit is somewhat outdated I'm still worried about the distribution of linkjuice from the starting page and how Google perceives the importance of the various pages. Would it make sense to adapt the structure of the navigation, so that the starting page only links to the 5 category pages and the category pages only link to the detail pages they contain? The site has good rankings for several pages and I assume that Google can tell that the large number of links is caused by the navigation. But with every page having appr. 180 links it may be difficult for Google to tell, which of those pages are the most important regarding internal link structure... Looking foward to your opinion and insights! Cheers, Chris
On-Page Optimization | | adwordize0