Footer Links Good or bad?
-
Hi
Can anyone answer this question confidently, I know Google is moving away from lots of links within the footer. However we specialise in websites for the travel industry and having a link to all the areas at the footer can be quite handy. Our websites complete this automatically.
Here is an example where due to design of the site the links don't quite fit well, so we need to change anyway. But before completing the work I wondered if there was a better way to do this.
http://www.dreamvillasitaly.com/
Many thanks
Andy
-
There's absolutely nothing wrong with footer links per se. It's just the fact that it's an inconspicuous part of the site, so SEOs have thought it was an easy place to sneak in some good links.
One example that I have (I won't dive into the details too much), is a competing SEO company in my local. He has the most SEO-friendly name you can could imagine, and he tosses his SEO-friendly/anchor text-rich name into the footer of all the sites that he works on. His link profile consists of almost all blog comments and these footer links. He ranks super high for 'SEO big name city', when there are clearly much, much more authoritative sites that should be showing up ahead of him.
So you definitely can't say that search engines are discarding the value of footer links.
-
Hi Greg,
Thanks for the update, can you point me in the right direction for creating the javascript drop down menu.
Thanks
Andy
-
Hi Andrew,
These days I see relatively little benefit from a SEO perspective of footer links.
However, they can be very valuable from a user experience point-of-view. If you think that your visitors will find this section of your site useful to navigate to relevant areas of your site that they might be interested in then I would be in favour of using such an approach.
-
Hi Andy,
I don't think there's anything wrong with having a deep footer with useful links to pages within your site, as long as they are there for the benefit of your visitors. With your example, I would personally look to move those links in to your main content area on the homepage, perhaps with a CSS/Javascript map of Italy that shows all the town locations as clickable links? That way you're still including those links from your homepage but in a more useful manner for the user.
Then if you wanted to keep the links on your inner content pages too, you could simply have a location dropdown box in your sidebar with the listings and a 'Go' button or similar.
My personal preference would probably be to just keep them to the map setup on the homepage, then perhaps introduce regional content pages with enlarged sections of the main map, so South Italy, North Italy, etc, etc.
Hope that helps in some way.
Greg
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
-
Jump links?
I am using a directory plug-in that doesn't have separate urls for each profile. Is there any way to set up a link to go directly to a particular business? https://www.sacramentotop10.com/business/chamber-of-commerce/
Web Design | | julie-getonthemap0 -
Internal Linking Conundrum
Hello I have a web site with a menu structure with three levels Top Level (Single Item) > First Level (Single Item) > Second Level (Multiple Items) The first level pages do not rank well. The top level and second level pages rank well. Search Console acknowledges 600 internal links to the top level. 600 to the second level. But only 100 to the first level. This is true across 6 top level items. It is not to do with page level links. It just isn't acknowledging all the links to the first level. Does anyone know why this might be? Thanks for any assistance you can give me.
Web Design | | Andrew-SEO0 -
Need suggestion: What is the best internal linking structure for our website to gain in SEO & UX too?
Hi all, We have 3 different editions of our product we are selling with 20 features. 1st edition & 2nd edition comes with 15 features in which 10 are common in each edition. 3rd edition comes with all 20 features. Now what's the best way to interlink and show the navigational menu to highlight 3 editions and features as well? Much appreciated if some one refer me a website with such structure. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Internal linking: Repeating same low level pages from high hierarchy level pages
Hi all, We have 3 editions of our product we are trying to rank better. Some of our features level pages from these editions are repeating in these 3 editions. Exactly like below example: clothes.com/cotton-fabrics/shirts clothes.com/wool-fabrics/shirts clothes.com/polyester-fabrics/shirts "Shirts" pages repeat in "cotton-fabrics", "wool-fabrics" and "polyester-fabrics". We have added rel=canonical to rank "shirts" in rank only one category. I wonder do we need to take any other measures to make sure that these pages don't affect us negatively. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Free websites that are good with SEO?
Dear members, I am looking for a free/ almost free website which is good for SEO. For example i am looking at WIX right now but i keeping reading that they aren't optimal for SEO. Does anybody has some tips which website is can use, example weebly, strato, etc?? Many thanks!
Web Design | | rijwielcashencarry0400 -
How to optimize SEO value of links in a calendar
Hi All- I am building a website about outdoor activities (cycling, kayaking, hiking, etc.). The site will most likely be built with either Joomla or Wordpress. A key piece of the site will be a calendar of upcoming events. The calendar will list the basic attributes of each event like date, time and location. However if an event has a webpage of it's own I will also include a link to that page in the details of the event. My question is: How can I create a calendar that will capitalize on the SEO value of the links included in the event descriptions? I've noticed many similar sites put events into a Google calendar and then embed the Google calendar into their webpage. In that situation would Google even see any external links included in the descriptions of the events? Thanks in advance for any input. -Chris
Web Design | | 1968Rouleur0 -
Sub-pages with more links than homepage - bad?
Hi,
Web Design | | rayvensoft
I am working on merging a number of my niche websites into a larger site (301 redirects, phased in over a few months). My question/concern is whether google will penalize the main site when it sees that the homepage has almost no links to it, and that about 10-15 sub-pages have a lot of links back to it. Does anybody have experience with this kind of scenario? Will it create a problem? Theoretically I could spend a year or so building up links to the new main page - building the brand - before doing the 301's. The smaller pages still bring in clients, but it is getting hard to maintain that many micro sites. Thanks in advance for any help.0 -
Anyone have a good example of a CSS-based multi-level nav bar that is semantic (including link level subordination) and is ux positive?
Anyone have a good example of CSS-based multi-level nav bar that is semantic (including link level subordination) and is ux positive? Or am I gonna have to actually make one? Anyone have a good example of CSS-based multi-level nav bar that is semantic (including link level subordination) and is ux positive? Or am I gonna have to actually make one?
Web Design | | anns0