Sitewide logo footer link - what's the risk?
-
Hi, an incredibly popular website, with several thousand pages, has offered me a site-wide footer logo link.
The site this popular website would backlink to has 50 high quality backlinks (and low volumes of traffic - it's a new site).
I am tempted to say no, because of the risk of penalty, but then I started wondering whether a logo link posed the same penalty risk as a text link.
-
Thanks for your responses everyone. Really helpful and much appreciated, Luke
-
Personally, I'd only take this if the link was nofollowed (i.e. for traffic purposes). I might consider a followed link using my url as an anchor, but would definitely not do it with a keyword as anchor text.
When considering links like this I would suggest considering the part of the quality guidelines that says, "Would you still do this if search engines didn't exist?" Ask yourself that objectively. If the idea is to get the footer link so it helps your SEO, then it has a high chance of looking manipulative to Google and could invoke a penalty/Penguin issue. But if the idea of the footer link is that it is truly one that drives traffic to your site then it may be ok.
What I find though is that it is hard for webmasters to evaluate these kinds of links objectively. We often fool ourselves into thinking it is for the traffic when really deep down we know that the purpose is to improve the pagerank of our own site.
If this site owner was willing to give you a footer link, I wonder, if instead, they would give you a mention in a blog post or article? That may appear more natural in the eyes of Google.
-
I would ask them to make it a homepage footer link only or links on an internal page (or 3 pages or so) that are indexed in Google and have some PR.
Sitewide footer links can get you penalized because of the old SEO link building tactic of "sponsored themes" I have seen it happen first hand.
-
I'd go for it, but I'm a betting man from Las Vegas
Variables:
- How well established is your site?
- Is the site relevant?
- Are their inbound links from well traveled authoritative sources?
- Will their site get alot of traffic in the future?
-
If you don't want the footer link from them, can you ask them for a single links somewhere else? Don't just dismiss the opportunity - especially if there's an opportunity to get a good relevant link.
The other thing to consider is not just the value (or risk) of a link for SEO, but also the direct traffic you might get. As a footer link you may not get a lot, but how many visitors would it take via this link before it's worth more than the extra link equity? How qualified would these visitors be? Are they likely convert?
What is the relationship between your site and the popular one you've been offered a link on? Is there an obvious connection that visitors to the sites are going to see?
-
I think your instincts are right: there's not a lot of risk, but not a lot of benefit either.
The algorithm doesn't "penalize" for sitewide footer links, it's just not as much of a ranking factor as it used to be. I guess the question is, knowing how popular the origin site is, if the links were set to nofollow, would you still do it? (branding, referral traffic)
If the answer is yes go for it. If it creates a relationship with that site's webmaster, it's a nobrainer.
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
-
Advise / Help on Bad Link Removals
Hey everyone.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TheITOteam
Im new to the community and new to backlinks - hence the question to the community today.
I would like help understanding options and work load around back links and removing them.
I have a client with over 8000 back links as a few years ago he paid someone about £10 to boost his rankings by adding thousands of backlinks.
We fear this is having a bad effect on their site and rankings organically as 90% of these back links have a spam score of over 50% and also no follows. My questions to the community (if you could be so kind to share) are:
1. Whats the best way to decide if a Backlink is worth keeping or removing
2. Is there a tool to decide this or assist with this somewhere on the internet? Ive had advise stating if its not hurting the page we should keep it. However, again...
How do I know what damage each Backlink is causing to the domain? I appriciate anyones time to offer some advice to a novice looking to clear these1 -
How many links can you have on sitemap.html
we have a lot of pages that we want to create crawlable paths to. How many links are able to be crawled on 1 page for sitemap.html
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | imjonny0 -
Competitors Linking to My Site
One of the more successful competitors in my niche has embarked on new strategy that seems to be working well for him. I noticed that many new links began to appear to my site from my competitor's stable of many websites. It appears that he has setup a link wheel to benefit a site that has been in the top Google position for several months now. The rim of the wheel links back to authority sites, including my own main site (established 7 years, now hanging on to the lowly 10th place on the serp). So the strategy seems to be: a) create a dozen sites that no-follow link back to authority sites including competitors, b) place links in a such a manner (bottom of page, uncolored links, from images) that a customer is unlikely to ever click on it, c.) do-follow to your own site and blast it to the top of Google. I don't think this competitor is worried about getting penalized. I've been watching this for years. When one site gets burned, he just shifts things around and brings up another one of his sites. He seems to age them for years, calling them up one by one as they are needed. Has anyone else noticed this? Is it a trend? Because it sure seems to work. He's crowded the front page now with 4 of his sites. Would it be appropriate for me to "disavow" his links? Would it matter?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | DarrenX0 -
Domain authority - Low quality links
I have a question I hope people can help me on. it is my intention for my next project to focus on domain authority, and a small number of high quality links. I have a couple of scenarios I would appreciate some advice on: 1. Can lower quality links lower domain authority? 2. Would you avoid links from low quality sites no matter what \ what domain authority levels should you avoid links from. 3. Should I be looking at link profiles of the sites I get links from. Does it matter if a site I get a link from has 1000's of spammy links (i.e. something to look out for when doing guest blogging). 4. Should I avoid directories no matter what, or is high pr \ domain authority directories ok to use, if I end up on a page of other relevant directory submissions related to my niche. Essentially, my aim is to have high quality links, but equally, there are some decent sites on the fringes that I will need to consider (based on a competitors link profile I researches).
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Jonathan19790 -
Hackers are selling fake 'Likes' on FB, Instragram
An interesting article on how to get social media buzz: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/16/fake-instagram-likes_n_3769247.html
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ChristopherGlaeser0 -
How Can I Check Competitors Linking Profile?
If I'm looking for weak points in my competitors linking structure, how can I use Open Site Explorer to do that? In other words, I'm not sure how to use Open Site Explorer? Zane
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Springboks0 -
When asking for links, what are good incentives to offer?
New to SEO and want to stay clean, What are white hat incentives you can offer in exchange for links? Giveaway for their readers? Give them helpful advice? Record video of me drinking a gallon of milk within 5 minutes?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 10JQKAs0 -
Spammy Links, SERPs, and Low Competition Keywords
While I've seen a lot of news about Google cleaning up content farms, link farms, and similar spam, I've also seen some companies start ranking very well for niche terms using these same practices. Question: Does Google completely discount links from content farms and similar sites or simply give them low value? Observation: I've seen a company start ranking well (top 3) for several terms when they used be on page 2. When I looked at their links, they are from article farms, directories, do-follow blogs and similar low-vale sources. Relative to others, they have about 10x the volume of links with the precise anchor text they are targeting. I wonder in absence of other information that these spammy links still count for something. Given the low competition for the term, this is enough to boost their rank. Just thoughts some thoughts as we are working on long-tail strategies for some key terms.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jeff-rackaid.com0