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  5. Service Location links in footer and on the service page - spamming or good practice?

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Service Location links in footer and on the service page - spamming or good practice?

Local Website Optimization
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  • AndyL93
    AndyL93 last edited by Nov 24, 2017, 9:32 AM

    We are are a managed IT services business so we try and target people searching for IT support in a number of key areas. We have created individual location pages (11) to localise our service in these specific areas.

    We put these location links in the footer which went to the specified IT support pages respectively. Now we have created a general 'managed IT services' page and are thinking of linking to these specific pages on there as well as it makes sense to do it.

    Would having these 11 links in the footer as well as on the 'managed IT services' page be spamming? or would it be good practice? If this is spamming, which linking location should hold preference.

    Would appreciate the feedback
    Thanks
    Andy

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • AndyL93
      AndyL93 @Roman-Delcarmen last edited by Nov 24, 2017, 2:24 PM Nov 24, 2017, 2:24 PM

      Thanks for the response Roman.

      So the on-page internal links are a must and the footer links probably should be avoided.

      This was my initial thought but i was swayed by our increase in rankings for some pages as well as a similar business who have done this method and rank highly in most support areas.

      Gaining back links is next in our to do list!

      Cheers

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • JoyHawkins
        JoyHawkins last edited by Nov 24, 2017, 2:09 PM Nov 24, 2017, 2:09 PM

        I definitely would not put these in the footer.  Marie Haynes has a very good article on footer links that I normally reference: https://www.mariehaynes.com/footer-links-and-penalties/

        Like Roman said, links in the footer don't offer much value anyway and put the site at risk for looking low-quality.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
        • Roman-Delcarmen
          Roman-Delcarmen last edited by Nov 27, 2017, 7:33 AM Nov 24, 2017, 1:43 PM

          A link in the footer does not have the same value of a link in the body, check this article of Rand Fishkin about How Links in Headers, Footers, Content, and Navigation Can Impact SEO

          Links in footers often get devalued

          So if there's a link that you've got in your footer, but you don't have it in your primary navigation, whether that's on the side or the top, or in the content of the page, a link down here may not carry as much weight internally. In fact, sometimes it seems to carry almost no weight whatsoever other than just the indexing.

          There's another good post about it Here is what Google says about footer links and penalties.

          So what you can do?

          Create 10 or 20 articles you can buy it or do it yourself, search for some blogs who accept guest post and submit your articles with this links to your site, so this links will give you traffic, relevance, and authority.

          In summary, avoid footer links

          AndyL93 1 Reply Last reply Nov 24, 2017, 2:24 PM Reply Quote 4
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