Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Site Footer Links Used for Keyword Spam
-
I was on the phone with a proposed web relaunch firm for one of my clients listening to them talk about their deep SEO knowledge. I cannot believe that this wouldn’t be considered black-hat or at least very Spammy in which case a client could be in trouble.
On this vendor’s site I notice that they stack the footer site map with about 50 links that are basically keywords they are trying to rank for. But here’s the kicker shown by way of example from one of the themes in the footer:
9 footer links:
Top PR Firms
Best PR Firms
Leading PR Firms
CyberSecurity PR Firms
Cyber Security PR Firms
Technology PR Firms
PR Firm
Government PR Firms
Public Sector PR FirmsEach link goes to a unique URL that is basically a knock-off of the homepage with a few words or at the most one sentences swapped out to include this footer link keyword phrase, sometimes there is a different title attribute but generally they are a close match to each other.
The canonical for each page links back to itself.
I simply can’t believe Google doesn’t consider this Spammy.
Interested in your view.
Rosemary -
Thanks everyone. I sure don't intend to use this tactic because it looks awful on a website and I would hate to have Google decide it was spammy .
Rosemary
-
Definitely a risky tactic.
What I would do is to:-
- Create a blog and add content optimised around the different keywords.
- Enhance the homepage to give Google more of an idea of what the site is about
- Create proper landing pages for some of the main keywords, maybe with case studies, content, services offered etc
You may also find some of those keywords not necessary or too low search volume/competitive to worry about. As you said Google semantic search is very intelligent, It would treat Top PR Firms & Best PR Firms as basically the same slightly favouring one or the other for an exact match. There again if you have high enough authority that will be outweighed.
-
I see a lot of it Rosemary. You'd think it would be penalised but it actually appears to work quite well for some. I see some agencies with stacks of keywords in the footer, in fairness, generally they do link to landing pages with plenty of good content and they are getting results.
I think that having a few linking to high quality pages is something that works quite well. Having loads linking to poor quality pages is not good and also is rubbish from a UX perspective.
-
In addition, with symantic search Google knows that these two phrases are the same:
CyberSecurity PR Firms
Cyber Security PR FirmsThey also do the same with Cybersecurity agency or firm.
Imagine telling a client to have all these individual landing pages!
-
This is definitely an old-school tactic that used to work, but doesn't work as much anymore. My opinion is that this particular tactic is not working too well for them anymore, but they haven't updated those sections. The funniest part is that they have "CyberSecurity PR Firms" & "Cyber Security PR Firms" pages to capture the tiny nuance in spelling.
From what I've witnessed, landing pages built with SEO in mind do still work, and can be a best practice, but not to the degree that this firm is doing it. They should combine a lot of those pages, build out the content a lot more on each page to make each page genuinely useful, and improve links, social shares, and CRO on each page if they really want to improve those. Just doing a quick search of the "Cyber Security PR Firms" term I didn't see any site in the top few results that looked like the one you're talking about, so it seems that this isn't working for them
So the answer isn't black and white. It's not about having 50 keyword targeted pages vs nothing at all. If you look at HubSpot, they have a lot of landing pages that focus on their software's features, such as https://www.hubspot.com/products/marketing-automation. Or Zapier's many app pages https://zapier.com/zapbook/.
At one point I thought this tactic was completely gone, but if done well it can do a lot of good!
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
-
Spam sites with low spam score?
Hello! I have a fair few links on some of the old SEO 'Directory' sites. I've got rid of all the obviously spammy ones - however there are a few that remain which have very low spam scores, and decent page authority, yet they are clearly just SEO directories - I can't believe they service any other purpose. Should we now just be getting rid of all links like this, or is it worth keeping if the domain authority is decent and spam score low? Thanks Sam
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
Suspicious external links to site have 302 redirects
Hi, I have been asked to look at a site where I suspect some questionable SEO work, particularly link building. The site does seem to be performing very poorly in Google since January 2014, although there are no messages in WMT. Using WMT, OPenSiteExplorer, Majestic & NetPeak, I have analysed inbound links and found a group of links which although are listed in WMT, etc appear to 302 redirect to a directory in China (therefore the actual linking domain is not visible). It looks like a crude type of link farm, but I cant understand why they would use 302s not 301s. The domains are not visible due to redirects. Should I request a disavow or ignore? The linking domains are listed below: http://www.basalts.cn/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | crescentdigital
http://www.chinamarbles.com.cn/
http://www.china-slate.com.cn/
http://www.granitecountertop.com.cn/
http://www.granite-exporter.com/
http://www.sandstones.biz/
http://www.stone-2.com/
http://www.stonebuild.cn/
http://www.stonecompany.com.cn/
http://www.stonecontact.cn/
http://www.stonecrate.com/
http://www.stonedesk.com/
http://www.stonedvd.com/
http://www.stonepark.cn/
http://www.stonetool.com.cn/
http://www.stonewebsite.com/ Thanks Steve0 -
Should I delete Meta Keywords from a website?
Hi Guys, I've been reading various posts on the Q&A section here at Moz about Meta keywords. I understand that meta keywords are not relevant with Google and that Bing signals this as spam. I'm optimising existing websites which already have meta keywords in the html coding. My question is: If I delete ALL meta keyword coding will this have any negative impact whatsoever? Thanks Mozers Jason 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Grant-Westfield0 -
A site is using their competitors names in their Meta Keywords and Descriptions
I can't imagine this is a White Hat SEO technique, but they don't seem to be punished for it by Google - yet. How does Google treat the use of your competitors names in your meta keywords/descriptions? Is it a good idea?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PeterConnor0 -
Pages linked with Spam been 301 redirected to 404\. Is it ok
Pl suggest, some pages having some spam links pointed to those pages are been redirected to 404 error page (through 301 redirect) - as removing them manually was not possible due to part of core component of cms and many other coding issue, the only way as advised by developer was making 301 redirect to 404 page. Does by redirecting these pages to 404 page using 301 redirect, will nullify all negative or spam links pointing to them and eventually will remove the resulting spam impact on the site too. Many Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Modi0 -
Site dropped suddenly. Is it due to htaccess?
I had a new site that was ranking on the first page for 5 keywords. My site was hacked recently and I went through a lot of trouble to restore it. Last night, I discovered that my site was nowhere to be found but when i searched site: mysite.com, it was still ranking which means it was not penalized. I discovered the issue to be a .htaccess and it have been resolved. My question is now that the .htaccess issue is resolved , will my site be restored back to the first page? Is there additional things that i should do? I have notified google by submitting my site
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | semoney0 -
Does anyone have any suggestions on removing spammy links?
I have some clients that recently got hit by "Penguin" they have several less than desireable backlinks that could be the issue? Does anyone have any suggestions on getting these removed? What are the odds that a webmaster on these spammy sites are going to remove them, and is it worth the time and effort?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RonMedlin3
