Sitewide links and ways round it
-
Hi there. I'm just re-reading The Art of SEO to ensure we have everything in place for our own website relaunch, and there was something that left me slightly confused with regards to sitewide links.
As a web design company, a lot of our links come from sitewides on client websites, currently in the pages' footer region.
Would these count as sitewide links, and would varying the target page and/or anchor text make these links count for more and be less of a red flag?
Alternatively, is there a way we can get credit from the sites we have designed without running the risk of having our links marked down or ignored altogether by the search engines?
(As an aside, it doesn't seem to have affected us so far, although it is obvious that only a small percentage of the inbound links are passing any real value - again, is this something we can rectify somehow?)
-
Thanks for your prompt reply - it pretty much confirmed what I thought. As far as the footprint goes, that's not too much of an issue - we have all the clients listed on our site anyway, so it's no huge drama for people to find this out. Also, we don't work with anyone we would be happy to shout about.
Something on the About Us, or possibly the news page for new sites, could be doable. I guess the only thing that caused confusion was the paragraph in the book that implied the authors' experiments showed differing location pages and anchor text throughout the site was treated somewhat nearer linear instead of being ignored.
-
If they're footer links on the entire site, then they ARE sitewide links. Part of the problem is, how is Google (or Bing, or any other SE) to know that they're your clients and not paid links or your own little private link network (which they are ... sort of)? That's why the links don't pass much value.
Aside from the SEO implications, It also gives people the ability to "footprint" your entire client list. That may or may not be something you want.
If your clients are really happy with your work, and it wouldn't be out of character with the web site, they might be amenable to giving you a "shout out" somewhere else on the site or perhaps a mention on the "About us" page.
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
-
Refferal links
I have a site where I can pick up where my hits came from. So if somebody clicks from another website link to visit my website, I will then pick up from which website they came from and also which page they landed on. Will google penalize me for this and see this as paid advertising?
Link Building | | Heinwest0 -
Relaunching a site that has had thousands of posts linking to the same 20 articles. How to properly setup internal linking?
I'm in the process of relaunching a music news site (www.prefixmag.com) that once did quite well in search (over a million monthly search visits in its prime). The site got crushed by Panda, etc. and we stopped updating it. I'm starting to do more research but one thing that I noticed was we have modules in the right rail (desktop) that are found on all of our article pages that point to the same posts. (Edit: Added attachment. The links in the right rail under Editor Picks, Features, News, Media, etc. are found on every page of the site). In other words, we have thousands of posts that all link to the same 20 or so articles. Should we not do this if we're not trying to emphasize these posts in Google? Assuming this is the case, what is the proper way to do internal linking? Do we simply setup a sitemap and link to it? I'm hoping to have the thousands of articles we've published over the years have a chance to rank in search again. Also, we have a number of posts that are thin in content should those pages not be submitted in the sitemap? Thanks in advance! 2KmX0
Link Building | | leggo0 -
Sitewide links from blogs we sponsor - A Bad Thing?
We sponsor a few blogs in our niche. As part of the sponsorship, they include an advert on the RHS or LHS of the blog page. Links are dofollow and are sitewide. Should I be concerned? Should I be asking for a nofollow instead, if possible? I've recently disavowed links and am waiting to see what happens with this - hopefully there's a Penguin update soon - but I wondered if the blog links were part of the problem.
Link Building | | Coraltoes770 -
Reciprocol Links
Am I correct in stating that linking to every article about your company is a bad idea. I see a lot of sites with followed links to the articles that link to them. Is this not devaluing the link? I've been recommending removing the links or no indexing the page and no following the links. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Link Building | | brandonschultz0 -
What is the best way to get unique links?
I do SEO for an online store that sells vacuum cleaners. I write a lot of articles for yahoo, hub pages, etc as well as promoted press releases. But I'm looking to get some more unique links. I'm looking for any tips I can get. I've done tons of directories that have actually got a couple keywords on the front page of google but I'm looking to shy away from link directories. I write a few articles every week. I also try and create new social networking sites for the business. Does anyone have any new ideas?
Link Building | | evacuumstoreSEO0 -
RSS links vs. contextual links
Which has more value? Passes more "link juice"? Auto generated rss links or contextual links?
Link Building | | nicole.healthline0 -
Is one way link exchange still worth?
I am new to link exchange do you think that by managing a link directory and start trying same subject industry good sties link exchange one way links is good idea ? do this still works ? I am seeing many competitors of me even do link exchange to non-subject industry site while i am sure that that shall not be worthy... But do you think that it worth to do link exchance with same industry sites ?
Link Building | | anand20100 -
Historical inbound links
Hi there, I would like to compare the current volume of inbound links to our website with the past, to see the growth. Is there a way to do this? Thanks, Heath
Link Building | | Team0