Backlinks in client website footers - best strategy?
-
I work for a web design & development agency. We are looking to rank for 'web design' and 'web development'. Typically we have a credit in the footer of every site we build (below). We have a lot of backlinks (>60,000) this way.
We link 'web design and development' and '<our name="">' separately.
Does this strategy sound ok and can anyone suggest improvements?</our>Thanks
-
My only response would be this. Sometimes it can work especially in the short run, but is often penalized. I would wait until the next penguin update comes out and take a look at the competitors site again. Again, not linking site wide from the footer is not a hard-and-fast rule but more of a general best practice.
The problem is that these are not editorial links per se. As such they are at constant risk are being devalued or penalized by Google.
You can roll the dice and sometimes see a short-term victory. But more often than not you risk getting burned.
-
I'd like to revisit this issue.
Why? Recently a competitor who was brand spankin new, propped their site up with this tactic, they had their parent company place a backlink to their site in the footer, so they get 160 some backlinks.
I saw this as one of the most boneheaded moves since what I read constantly says don't do this, google will throat check you.
However they aren't being penalized like I thought and read. In fact, they've surpassed my client's site in rankings. It's a bit perplexing to experience really.
So even though others have said :
Don't link externally in the footer
A couple of other rules that I see people violate all the time that Google has made painfully clear in the past few months: Don't link externally in the footer. Just don't. I'm not going to go into the reasons. Just don't do that.
What will happen to sites that link to other sites from their footer?
-
SEO's are wary and for good reason - it wasn't long ago that 'footer' links was an over-used tactic that was quashed, resulting in the start of the 'blogroll' type links. Like I said, opinions are going to differ wildly for different SEO's on this one. For us, when we work a client, we know and control their link profile so we know that their site(s) are very clean. As such, we feel that having a footer link to our business (just as web design companies do) that we are not at risk.
Like you, we see this everywhere in our competitor link profiles and in fact, we see large variations in local ranking when there are links added or removed from their or our local clients.
So it's going to be your call in the end - opinions will differ, and even I might change my mind within the next few months depending on what happens in the SE Algo world. But for now this is a practice we are actively using.
-
Wish I could give you a definite answer, but because it's algorithmic, over-optimization is a shifting target.
"Over-optimization is the amount of optimization that makes your rankings go down."
-
Thanks Cyrus.
This makes sense, but my main issues are:- All our high ranking competitors use this strategy. A lot.
- We've adjusted some of the inbound footer links to include service terms in the anchors and our rankings have noticeably improved.
So I think I will continue with this plan, but mixing up the anchor text.
BTW - I've read a few articles on 'over optimisation' and there seems to be a mixed consensus on what it actually means. Are there any definitie article on this?
-
Hi Matt,
I fall in the camp of SEOs that would avoid this strategy.
We've seen lots of cases of this backfiring, especially in the past year. For a specific example of site-wide footers devastating a business, see Ross Hudgen's piece on WPMU, and how they recovered....
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-wpmuorg-recovered-from-the-penguin-update
Here's the problem. Google tends to devalue:
- Site-wide, boilerplate anchors
- Anchors in the footer
- Over-optimized anchors
Since Penguin, these three have been pounded especially hard.
I'd much rather have a single link from a single page - preferably in the body text - from each website built than a sitewide footer. I'd also vary the anchor text from link to link. This could be offered as an incentive, such as $100 off if the client includes a link (although this technically violates Google's guidelines on paid links. Gasp!)
If you do build footer links, I'd try NOT to build them to your homepage. If you ever incur a penalty and need to "cut" the links, it's very hard to return a 404 from your homepage.
Also, generic, branded or complete URLs are "safest" for sitewide links, because they aren't over-optimized.
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
-
Thanks Jared. Though why would most SEOs say this is a bad idea?
-
Honestly, at first glance most SEO's would probably say this is a bad idea, particularly with Penguin - the problem is, it seems to work. I know as an SEO when i do competitive analysis, some of our competitors have thousands of links that read:
SEO by
And they certainly rank for their respective terms. Opinions may differ with some SEO professionals here, but I would argue that unless you have seen a significant decline in positioning for the anchored text, I wouldn't be concerned about it and would venture to say that it's probably a positive strategy. The best part about links like these (we do this as well) is that for the most part, the links are usually very clean.
Hope that helps.
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
-
Backlinks Question
Hi all, i own a small business in an extremely competitive marketplace. I have also educated myself greatly about seo over the past 3 years and currently do my own. The one thing I cannot figure out, for the life of me, is how my two competitors keep beating me in rankings without backlinks. I mean, I have about 3K solid backlinks, mostly do follow, from top notch publications, sites, citations ect. In ahref, it shows that he has almost no backlinks. I cannot crack th third spot, but they dominate with zero backlinks, and the domains are only a bit older than mine. Thoughts on this?
Link Building | | ImeuOkou0 -
Backlinks and SPAM
I was doing some back link review of competitors and I have noticed that many of our competition have 300+ do follow back links from Justia.com and an additional 300+ do follow links from law.cornell.edu (they share the same database). The links on Justia are from different pages and they are all going to the root of our competitors site. So the questions are as follows; 1: For the purpose of SEO is this considered SPAM 2: If not SPAM, then does it have a positive effect on the competitions website and should I attempt to emulate for my client. Thanks in advance. -Jeff
Link Building | | FriedmanSimon10000 -
Backlinks with high DA but PA1
Whenever we get new backlinks, its always on a PA 1 page, does this pass a lot of link juice as long as the DA is high? I know the PA can go up by promoting the page, but i rather promote my own website than one page linking to my site. Any thoughts on this?
Link Building | | MozVpn0 -
How do I search for a link within a competitors website that is linking my website?
Hello, I have just been checking my link profile and according to webmaster tools a competitor is linking to my website. Is there anyway of finding this link besides looking at every page within their website? Many thanks
Link Building | | mblsolutions0 -
Website structure for SEO
Hi,Im working on Food Recipes website, i"m targeting "step by step recipes" how should i structure this website and what pages should i build my links to? If the whole website is about "step by step recipes" When you search for "step by step recipes" on Google, you'll see most of them are separate pages Should i create its own category call it "step by step recipes" and list all of my posts? but isn't it duplicated content ? ill be really appreciated with your help ! Thank you
Link Building | | KentR0 -
What is the best white hat seo link building strategy?
My goal is to build links that comply with Google's Quality Guidelines. I am wondering what is the best way to approach webmasters or bloggers about submitting guest posts or writing content. I have done a competitive analysis, and have a list of potential link sources, but I am not sure what approach to take next. Any advice or strategy would be appreciated.
Link Building | | djlittman0 -
New website, small business, niche market --- what's my best link building strategy?
Hi everyone, We are a small company manufacturing a niche product (indoor playground equipment), our new English website (www.funlandiaplaygrounds.com) has just been launched 2 months ago, before that we didn't even have a website in English. As the international sales manager of such a small company, I have to do all the international marketing jobs including SEO, but before this I'm almost a noob on SEO. I've just started the linking building work for our website, after a research on the links of our highest ranked competitors, I have found out that almost ALL of the external links of them come from directories and purchased links, many links are very dubious, please see the open explorer results below: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?page=1&site=www.spiplay.co.uk&sort=page_authority&filter=&source=&target=page&group=1 http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.softplay.com%2F http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links.html?page=1&site=www.china-cheer.com&sort=page_authority&filter=&source=&target=page&group=1 http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aileplay.com%2F http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=internationalplayco.com%2F The search keywords is: indoor playground equipment. According to the latest SEO theory and numerous posts I've read here, links from these directories carry very low value, and solely relying on these links may even cause penalty to the website, but the reality is, all these competitors rank on the top as a result of these "spammy" links. For example this website www.aileplay.com that has the highest PA of 64 and rank on the first page on the search result of indoor playground equipment, has tons of spammy links. That is the situation we are facing now, then my questions is: As a small business in such a niche market, what is our best strategy to rank well in a reasonable time, say 3 months to 6 months? I do not think our competitors are very strong and hard to beat, I believe we will beat them in content creation for sure, but what should we do in link building? should we start to get directory links now, as it obviously works for them? Or should we first create more attractive content, then use these content to get natural links BEFORE we submit for directory, as recommended by most link experts here? If so should we just sit back doing nothing before the link worthy content is created and natural links starts to come in? I highly appreciate any comments! DSG_clan
Link Building | | DSG_clan0 -
Backlinking
What's the best way to get back links and is there any tools that you would suggest to help me?
Link Building | | petewinter0