Site-wide Footer Link on Client/Friend Website - Dangerous?
-
Hi Guys,
I've got a friend / client / business associate who's website I helped develop. It's a three letter dot-com, so good trust, and an eCommerce site, so lot's of pages.
When I launched my new site about 6 weeks ago I put "Official IT Partner of MySite.com" in the footer. No keywords in the anchor text, just the domain URL...
There are no other external links like that on the site whatsoever, and I haven't been hit by Penguin. I'm ranking well for local targeted keywords a few weeks after launch, and traffic continues to increase...
I am worried that Google will see this is unnatural, but I've received no warning or experienced any decline in rankings. There's about 2800 pages linking from the site to my site, all in the footer of course.
Would it be better to remove the link from the footer and add it just to the home page and a couple of other high authority pages, or should I leave it be. It's not "unnatural", I am affiliated with the site and work in partnership with the site, but it does fit that profile.
I'm thinking about removing the footer link and adding a small graphic on the home page of the linking site which links to my root domain, with a couple of broad keyword anchored links in a description underneath that also link to relevant pages on my site...
What do you think?
2800 links w/ my URL as anchor text from high Domain Authority / Low Page Authority pages (the homepage and a few other pages have decent authority) to my root domain
OR
Three different links from one High DA/ High PA homepage (one image alt, two anchored w/ broad keywords) to three different pages on my site.
Again, there are no other site-wide external links on the domain, and I'm pretty sure I escaped the Penguin.
Looking forward to hearing the different points of view.
Thanks,
Anthony
-
Hi Anthony,
I would love to hear how you got on? what decision did you make and did it have an impact?
I am facing the same dilemma as yourself. My theory is site wide brand text links or URL links should be fine however, its just theory, I have nothing to back this up.
Before I make a decision on the matter I would love to hear your take on it.
Regards
Gav
-
Hi again Egol,
The site that the links are pointing to is actually my own site and the linking domain is my friend / business associate's. I do know about Penguin and Panda, and my link profile is pretty clean. I haven't employed any black-hat methods. When I launched the site, about six weeks ago, I needed to compete quickly, and having the only external site-wide link on a high trust domain seemed like it would help. That was pre-Penguin though, and I can see how it would look unnatural. My traffic has gone up since the 24th, so I don't think I was penalized, though some of my competitors were.
That's what's confusing me a little bit about Penguin Advertising is natural in business, and companies that are affiliated often "refer" potential clients to the each other. That's basically what I did. I help him with SEO and marketing, and he didn't mind that I added a link to my new site in the footer to help me out. There's nothing unnatural or dishonest about it, but it does make me nervous. It's not like a blogroll or link bank though, there are no other outbound links on the site, and we're both Atlanta based businesses, so there's some contextual similarity, and it doesn't look spammy.
Still, I think I'll play it safe and just add two or three links w/ a little graphic on the home page of the linking site. Do you agree that's a better/safer idea?
-
I am worried that Google will see this is unnatural,
Does your friend know about Penguin, Panda, etc. and understand what they are about?
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
-
New Featured Links in Organic Search Results?
Hi guys, I just performed a search and came across something that looks like "featured links" under a regular organic search result (see screenshot). This is the first time I'm seeing this. It looks like a combination of callout and sitelink ad extensions for Google ads. Basically, linked callouts. I went to the landing page to check out the source code and it seems like they are calling it "featured link" in their code. I tried to find more info online but wasn't able to find anything. (I might not be using the correct search terms.) Does anyone know how to take advantage of this? Thanks a lot for your feedback. dJ9dmTr
Algorithm Updates | | HinterP0 -
Website dance on Google Map results and organic seo results
My website is daily showing different position on maps.google.com and for the last few days like yesterday it was on 21st position on some keyword and today it is no where and same with other keywords. Is this a Google Dance ?? what can be its period ? and what is tyhe solution to handle it ??
Algorithm Updates | | mnkpso0 -
Sitemap link in footer?? Is it needed
Hi, I know sitemap is important to have as it tells google the pages to crawl. I have an xml sitemap for google to crawl. However, Do I need a sitemap link in footer. Any thoughts?? Does it have any harm if I dont include a sitemap link in footer
Algorithm Updates | | pejman500 -
Unable to increase the site traffic since 2 yrs
Hello friends, I am new to seomoz forum and this is my first query. Even i asked this query in many forums, i didnt get the right answer. it will be a big help if anyone answers my question. Since 2yrs i am doing seo for my site. even i am following all the white hat techniques and doing every submission manually. Still my site traffic is below 100 visits. Can any one help me to increase the site traffic? What are the techniques i need to follow to increase site visits? Also one of my sites recently got disappeared from google. I have checked all the pages listed in google for my site's major keywords. I didnt find the site anywhere. Can u hep me why this condition wll happen and what to do to overcome such issues?
Algorithm Updates | | Covantech0 -
Are links irrelevant now?
After having one of my sites trashed by penguin, I rebuilt it on a new domain. Pretty much everything was the same except for the look of the site plus I decreased the keyword density and did a few other things to avoid future Penguin penalties. I created a small number of directory links. My site is now maybe 6 months old, doesn't get much traffic, however I wa suprised to see that my main keyword " uncontested divorce lawyer" is now ranking number 1 in google in US ! This despite the EMD update. The domain name is www.uncontesteddivorce-lawyer.com . Like I said I still don't get a lot of traffic on this site. I have another site which until recently was driving over 500 visitors a month, since November it has declined to 350 a month. This site is over 4 years old and was unaffected by all the updates, until recently. It too is an EMD but has more links. Not co complain but can anyone explain the #1 rating? Also it would appear that links are practically irrelevant. I have read and heard that practically no one is linking to content, instead they are sharing, liking, etc. Any comments
Algorithm Updates | | diogenes0 -
What are the most trusted SEO sites?
Other then SEOmoz what sites can you trust for SEO? Is there some type of formula I can use to find out if any site is trustworthy?
Algorithm Updates | | uofmiamiguy0 -
Has there been a change in the Bing/Yahoo Algorithm?
I have noticed many of my sites took a beating this month on Bing and Yahoo, while Google stayed pretty flat.
Algorithm Updates | | netviper0 -
Conveying Farmer Update To Client
I work with a site that saw their super competitive top terms drop off page one with the Farmer update. So, #4 to #12.... that kinda thing. In the last year they've added a huge catalog of 500,000 item pages. The catalog has climbed to a 76% bounce rate, where as the handful of top pages is in the 20s +/-. To date, I haven't had much of anything to do with the catalog. That makes for a sitewide average bounce rate of almost 70% which has almost doubled in the past year as the catalog has ramped up. The catalog gets a ton of search traffic and sells a lot of items via that organic traffic. I'm advocating for a variety of measures, including cleaning up the catalog: 301ing out of stock pages to the homepage 301ing 100% bounce rate pages who've had hundreds/thousands of visits over time.. Improving the user experience. Offering rainchecks for out of stock items. They generally don't believe that the huge bounce rate (bad user experience stats) is hurting their top terms on their top pages. They see it as two different issues. Any thoughts on how to present evidence that the catalog is the culprit? In researching it, I found these two quotes: "In particular, it's important to note that low quality pages on one part of a site can impact the overall ranking of that site," the Google spokesman said. and... "Google spokesman told PCMag that sites that believe they have been adversely impacted should "extensively evaluate their site quality." Not only that, but the item descriptions are straight from the manufacturer, so the pages aren't that unique text-wise. Any industry standard on catalog page bounce rates? Not that it's the only possible area of SEO improvement, because it's not. I thought those quotes were pretty conclusive, but I guess not. Is there some straight-from-Google additional info to suport this? Or, am I just wrong to focus on user experience... bounce rate, pages, time on site, etc? Thanks! Mike
Algorithm Updates | | 945010