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.
Sitewide footer links - bad or not?
-
Hi,
Sitewide footer links, is this bad for SEO?
Basically I see all the time the main navigation repeated in the footer, sometimes as almost something to just fill the footer up.
Is this bad for SEO (im guessing it is) and can you explain why you think it is?
Cheers
-
I think it's erroneous to say that users don't want to see "built by" in the footer. I am often curious about who built or designed a website, and seeing that in the footer helps me navigate there. How does Google decide what a user wants to see or doesn't want to see? If a link is clicked on often, by a variety of IP addresses, could that indicate that it's a useful link and shouldn't be discounted, even if it's in the footer?
-
Quite curious with this as I see no definite answer to this.
Let's say that I build a site for a client and place a footer that says "built by me"...
Will that footer link impact my rankings?
But just to be safe possibly a rel="nofollow" would be an option. Would like to hear your opinion on this.
Thanks!
-
You say "Basically I see all the time the main navigation repeated in the footer, sometimes as almost something to just fill the footer up." - you have to remember that only the first link on the page to a specific URL is counted. So if a link is repeated in the footer, it's worthless (from a SEO point of view, it may be beneficial for user experience/navigation).
The days of linking key terms in the footer are numbered, don't think SEO, think user experience.
-
You should pick your top 10-20 most important pages on your website & link them from your footer. Since the homepage normally has the most domain authority you want to try to pass along some of the authority to the other pages within your site that you want to rank.
Don't put too many links in the footer as this will over-dilute the home page link juice.
-
it is not bad if you are doing internal linking and not anchor text spamming in the footer links. It can be used to pass PR to more important pages but should mostly be though of as providing the user a better experience when navigating your site.
footer links are bad for SEO when linking to other sites or when other sites link to you since that creates hundreds, thousands or even millions of links with the same anchor text. it's an old SEO tactic that no longer works
-
Linking to pages in the footer generates more links which dilutes link juice passed to all pages that are linked to. Usually the footer is where non-important SEO pages are located but important pages for customer experience like, accounts / support / contact / privacy / terms of service / legal.
You should always side with the USER EXPERIENCE it should not be frustrating for your users to find what they are looking for. Taking that into consideration you should also keep the links to less important SEO pages sitewide to a minimum and not duplicate your navigation unless it makes sense from a usability standpoint. Other-words don't do it to fill up space.
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
-
Top hierarchy pages vs footer links vs header links
Hi All, We want to change some of the linking structure on our website. I think we are repeating some non-important pages at footer menu. So I want to move them as second hierarchy level pages and bring some important pages at footer menu. But I have confusion which pages will get more influence: Top menu or bottom menu or normal pages? What is the best place to link non-important pages; so the link juice will not get diluted by passing through these. And what is the right place for "keyword-pages" which must influence our rankings for such keywords? Again one thing to notice here is we cannot highlight pages which are created in keyword perspective in top menu. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Link juice through URL parameters
Hi guys, hope you had a fantastic bank holiday weekend. Quick question re URL parameters, I understand that links which pass through an affiliate URL parameter aren't taken into consideration when passing link juice through one site to another. However, when a link contains a tracking URL parameter (let's say gclid=), does link juice get passed through? We have a number of external links pointing to our main site, however, they are linking directly to a unique tracking parameter. I'm just curious to know about this. Thanks, Brett
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
Does Navigation Bar have an effect on the link juice and the number of internal links?
Hi Moz community, I am getting the "Avoid Too Many Internal Links" error from Moz for most of my pages and Google declared the max number as 100 internal links. However, most of my pages can't have internal links less than 100, since it is a commercial website and there are many categories that I have to show to my visitors by using the drop down navigation bar. Without counting the links in the navigation bar, the number of internal links is below 100. I am wondering if the navigation bar links affect the link juice and counted as internal links by Google. The Same question also applies to the links in the footer. Additionally, how about the products? I have hundreds of products in the category pages and even though I use pagination I still have many links in the category pages (probably more than 100 without even counting the navigation bar links). Does Google count the product links as internal links and how about the effect on the link juice? Here is the website if you want to take a look: http://www.goldstore.com.tr Thank you for your answers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onurcan-ikiz0 -
Sitewide Footer Links & Sister Sites
Hi We have a number of sister sites across Europe - the sites are under a different domain name, but have a very similar layout & product offering. When looking at duplicate content, they are flagged as being a moderate risk with similar content - we don't duplicate product content, however it's similar. We also link to them in the footer in a drop down - not anchor text links - however this is still seen by Google. I don't think I'll be able to remove links to our sister companies, but should I implement the Href lang if the sites are slightly different? Or find another way to link to them? Here's an example http://www.key.co.uk/en/key & https://www.manutan.fr/fr/maf
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Link Brokers Yes or No?
We have a client who has asked us to talk to link brokers to speed up the back linking process. Although I've been aware of them for ages I have never openly discussed the possible use of 'buying' links or engaging in that part of the industry. Do they have a place in SEO and if so what is the MOZ communities thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
Is tabbed content bad for SEO?
I work for a Theater show listings and ticketing website. In our show listings pages (e.g. http://www.theatermania.com/broadway/this-is-our-youth_302998/) we split our content into separate tabs (overview, pricing and show dates, cast, and video). Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by separating the content? Are we better served with keeping it all in a single page? Thanks so much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
Wikipedia links - any value?
Hello everyone. We recently posted some of our research to Wikipedia as references in the "External Links" section. Our research is rigorous and has been referenced by a number of universities and libraries (an example: https://www.harborcompliance.com/information/company-suffixes.php). Anyway, I'm wondering if these Wikipedia links have any value beyond of course adding to the Wiki page's information. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Harbor_Compliance0 -
Maximum number of links
Hi there, I have just written an article that is due to be posted on an external blog, the article has potentially 3 links that could link to 3 different pages on my website, is this too much? what do you recommend being the maximum number of links? Thanks for any help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780
