External Sitewide Links and SEO
-
I have one big question about the potential SEO value -- and possibly also dangers? -- of "followed" external sitewide links.
Examples of these would be:
- a link to your site from another site's footer
- a blogroll link
- a link to your site from another site's global navigation
Aside from the link's position in the HTML file (the higher the better, presumably), are these links essentially the same from an SEO point of view or different (and how)?
There used to be an influential view out there that the link juice value of a sitewide link was the same as that of a single link (presumably from the linking site's home page), even though a sitewide link may in fact result a huge number individual links. Is this true or false? What is the math here?
Should one worry about having "too many" sitewide links, in the sense that this may raise red flags by way of the algo?
I talked to someone a few months ago (before the recent algo updates) who believed that he had got a minus 10 penalty or whatever it was for getting too many sitewide links
We offer website design and development as well as SEO, and we put a keyworded link to ourselves in the footer. I think this is a fairly common practice. Is this a good or bad idea SEO-wise?
One opinion is that for external sitewide footer links, you should best have a dofollow link on the home page, but nofollow it on all other pages. What is your opinion about that?
Is there anything else that is distinct, interesting or important about sitewide links' SEO value and pitfalls?
Thank you!
-
Story's still pretty much the same - I'd be MORE worried than before if you're doing either in a way that could be perceived as intentionally manipulative and more for engines than users, but I wouldn't sweat doing either if it's user-focused, high value and editorial.
-
Hi Rand,
Now with Google Panda update do you think the same about this issue?
I am asking from both sides:
-
Having links sitewide on an external web.
-
Having sitewide links in my web to an external one.
Looking forward to your reply!
All the best,
Exequiel
-
-
Hrm. On #1 - maybe sometimes? It really depends on the case scenario. A blogroll link is often either on every page or a separate page linked to on every other page of the site (like SearchEngineLand). That probably gets you 99% of the value you'd get from links to your homepage from another blog. Just having another link from a "what's hot" or "recommended" section doesn't seem like it would do that much more (unless you're talking in terms of user CTR and the benefits that brings, in which case, yes - I like it!)
On #2 - Never heard that. I'd probably say that if the link in the footer is manipulative, ask that it be somewhere else. If it makes sense/belongs there, it's probably OK to have it followed.
-
Thanks much for your helpful response.
I further wonder:
1. One finds that on many blogs there is a blog roll but in the same sidebar there can also be single text links in some section like "what's hot" or "recommended" that appear only on the home page. On your view, these latter links are technically more potent, right? (Assuming everything is high quality and non-spammy.)
2. I have seen it recommended that if you are in a sitewide footer link, it's better if only the home page link were followed, but the same footer link on all other pages were made nofollow. Any truth to that?
-
My general stance would be to worry only if the links are obviously manipulative or non-editorial. If you've just happened to receive links from partners, clients, fans or bloggers that appear in footers sitewide, that's not a big issue. Look at networks like Conde Nast or Techmeme - sitewide links back and forth between all the related properties is a common thing.
They almost certainly don't pass the same value as separate, individually created links from each of those pages - the diversity of your link profile matters a lot, but unless there's other reason they look spammy, I wouldn't sweat it.
BTW - I also wouldn't intentionally target or pursue these kinds of links. SEOs used to do that when PageRank was the big dog in the algo, and every bit of PR juice meant more value, but nowadays, PR is just a small component of rankings.
-
Yes, footer links are not so good as links from top content. So long they are good links my opinion is: I better have footer (relevant) link than no link at all.
-
I would appreciate substantiated, technical opinions, not mere intuitions about what might "make sense," please.
I don't see why an Auto Auction blog roll link on a car blog necessarily "sort of looks spammy," or why there would necessarily be no way to determine the link's topical relevance. Indeed, I think diversification would certainly benefit from at least a few such blog roll links, especially if they appear on authoritative and relevant blogs.
But this doesn't answer any of my questions.
-
Sitewide links sort of look spammy to me, and are more often not based around any sort of content that a search engine can also use to determine the relevance of a link.
This concept makes sense to me.
It's difficult to determine the value, but I think diversification is key in building a link portfolio, especially with the wide variety of websites passing votes to pages today.
Someone please correct me if I am wrong. I will vote myself down on this one.
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
-
Massive Influx of Total Links - But External Links are Dropping?
Hey Moz Community, I was checking out the Links on one of my client's sites, as they were hit with spammy external links about a year ago, and noticed a large influx of Total Links to the site. According to Moz, external links have actually dropped over the last few months, so I can only assume they are internal links. But, I don't see how my client could add so many internal links over the past 5 months, as they don't do much besides upload new products (they're an ecommerce clothing retailer) via Shopify. They haven't added much over the past half year either. Total links were about 130K in Oct 2019; today, the site has almost 1 million. I've attached some screenshots for reference via Moz to better illustrate the issue. Appreciate any insights into this. Thank you in advance! hhCCUsk lyGltZD
Technical SEO | | EdenPrez0 -
Negative SEO
I have got some idiot bombarding my site with spam links, most likely a negative SEO attempt. It started off very small and has ramped up to between five and 10 spam links per day. I think it may be having a slightly negative affect although difficult to tell. I can do a link cleanup, but I'm not sure that is a long term solution, I'm just going have to do it again in a few weeks time. Does anyone have any experience?
Technical SEO | | seoman100 -
Can I redirect a link even if the link is still on the site
Hi Folks, I've got a client who has a duplicate content because they actually create duplicate content and store the same piece of content in 2 different places. When they generate this duplicate content, it creates a 2nd link on the site going to the duplicate content. Now they want the 2nd link to always redirect to the first link, but for architecture reasons, they can't remove the 2nd link from the site navigation. We can't use rel-canonical because they don't want visitors going to that 2nd page. Here is my question: Are there any adverse SEO implications to maintaining a link on a site that always redirects to a different page? I've already gone down the road of "don't deliberately create duplicate content" with the client. They've heard me, but won't change. So, what are your thoughts? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Rock330 -
What do I do with these back links?
In the last two weeks, I've got 10 pingbacks from this http://caraccidentlawyer.cc/coroner-ids-berkeley-bodies-who-were-killed-in-recent-car-accident/ and sites like it. The featured attorney is a competitor of ours and, since the links aren't sex/drugs/rock&roll related, (and he's linked too) I doubt this is a negative SEO campaign, but I want it to stop. These blogs are basically pure spam. Any suggestions?
Technical SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup1 -
'External nofollow' in a robots meta tag? (advertorial links)
I believe this has never worked? It'd be an easy way of preventing any penalties from Google's recent crackdown on paid links via advertorials. When it's not possible to nofollow each external link individually, what are people doing? Nofollowing and/or noindexing the whole page?
Technical SEO | | Alex-Harford0 -
Are my Canonical Links set up correctly?
I have Enable Canonical Links (recommended) on my web site. However, I also have THIS checked: Enable full URL for Home Page Canonical Link (include /default.asp) Is it hurting me??? Keep getting dinged on our report card. We are using the Volusion shopping cart software/platform.
Technical SEO | | GreenFarmParts0 -
If two links from one page link to another, how can I get the second link's anchor text to count?
I am working on an e-commerce site and on the category pages each of the product listings link to the product page twice. The first is an image link and then the second is the product name. I want to get the anchor text of the second link to count. If I no-follow the image link will that help at all? If not is there a way to do this?
Technical SEO | | JordanJudson0 -
Homepage display for seo
hi, Which is the best , seo speaking, about the homepage display with a CMS (joomla here). 1/ To display articles as "blog" and thus articles are always recent but not the same (chronological).. 2/ To display always a same article (just 1) but updated sometimes to times ? 3/ Both of them are good ? Tks a lot in advance..
Technical SEO | | mozllo0