Footer Links when is it to much?
-
Hi, so iv been searching around the internet, and I have come up with the general consensus that footer links that link to external sites are bad? Can anyone verify this statement? Also when do Footer links become spammy, and what is your opinion on site wide footer links?
I have also read that if you are a bigger brand, that you most likely would be able to get away with some more things(such as, linking to external sites) thanks for your help.
Peter
-
Linking to external sites from a footer is not harmful, unless the sites you are linking to are low quality sites.
What can be harmful is receiving a lot of sitewide footer links with exact keyword anchor text. This can be seen as spammy by Google. Footer links & sitewide links in general also don't carry as much weight as in-context links.
-
Hi Peter,
My opinion on footer links is they should be used for internal site navigation or provide help to the user. Example when I'm on a site I'm not familiar with, I generally expect to find help/contact us in the footer.
Now linking externally you really need to examine the goal behind this sort of link, because it can not only hurt your site, but add to a potential penalty to the site you're linking to.
It hurts your site in 2 ways, one you are diluting your link juice to your own links by passing it to another site, and secondly because footer links are generally on every page you are kind of spamming the link to the search engine.
Since Google's Panda and Penguin updates sites have been receiving penalties for link over optimizing SEO, which includes anchor text from links. Again since footer links are generally site wide you can really rack up anchor spam for the site you're linking to. Granted this gets into negative SEO and there is debate about how this works, but if its controversial I just tend to stay away from it.
Okay all that said, the answer dependent on whether or not the link is going to be sitewide, if it has value on every page you use it on and the overall purpose of the link. If you want to link to a parent website, or subsidiary website, put the link on appropriate pages instead like about us, or company info. If you are linking to something like blog.mywebsite.com you may want to evaluate moving the blog from sub-domain to a directory inside your site, essentially combining the site into 1. Remember sub-domains are treated as different websites.
Finally to answer your question about bigger websites getting away with this sort of thing. Yes, it is true because despite them not worrying about the search engines, the search engine still worries about them, and if they are the most relevant site, the search engine will still want to show its users (searchers) the most relevant site.
Hope that helps,
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
-
We're looking at providing SEO for a website that has the majority of its incoming links from websites created solely to provide links. Few have bad spam rankings. How worried should I be about those links?
The majority of incoming links to a prospect's website are from website pages apparently created solely to provide links to the website. Few have high spam scores. The sites linking to the main site have versions of blogs with linked text. They seem to be providing positive SEO value now, but I'm concerned they might get noticed and hurt the main site in the future.
Link Building | | PKI_Niles1 -
Grr SEO linking.. I am not understanding why I wouldn't have lots more links.. Please help. Thanks
I have done the whole moz open exploer and I am not understanding why my site wouldn’t have more links registering to my website.. I have lots of sites(directorys and 3rd party) with my website domain in them. The only one that is linking to my site is BBB.com and my advertsing with saint paul press. www.somerersetautodealer.com But if I have links with all kinds of automotive directories why wouldn’t they register? I am sure this a simply answer or that I am not understanding something. Thanks for your help! Scott
Link Building | | Scott12340 -
Question about placing links
My company have a website about car related business. I have found around 8-10 sites that is car related which can place links to me. I am wondering whats the best way to make this most effective. I have been writing 8 different texts with maybe 200-250 words each which i plan to use on the sites that is going to link to my site. Should i use exact anchors links or should i use different anchors on every site so it looks more natural? My site today does not have much quality links to it which i believe can make problem when you get 8-10 new sites linking that is very related and have a nice content? How long time should i wait when i put a link to each site to make it less unnatural? Happy for any answer! 🙂
Link Building | | Rob-0 -
Houzz Comment Links
A company I am working with has been posting pictures and links to their website in the comments section of Houzz articles. I notice many companies have been doing this in general. While it generates decent amounts of traffic, I am wondering if google sees 30 links coming from article comments that it will deem that as spam? My gut tells me to send these comment links to the Houzz member profile, then direct them to your own website. Thoughts? ***Anyone in home design, decor, etc. should really get involved there. Fantastic source of business for professional in that field.
Link Building | | RandyEpp0 -
Too Many Links???
SEOMOZ is telling me I have more than 100 links on quite a few of my pages, and I cant seem to find out what links they are finding. Like for instance on this page http://standupguys.biz/what-we-haul/commercial-junk-removal-services/computer-removal-recycling/ It is telling me that I have 117 hyper links (which is WAY too high). Can anyone explain to me where these are coming from, and how I can avoid this?? Please and thank you.
Link Building | | Caseman0 -
External link
Hi guys! You must get many questions about external links... This is mine. If I get an external link with good authority ranking in google, but it is not relevant to the site (for example, my site is about marquees, but we could get links from schools, which are our main clients, or any type of client) Does that affect negatively somehow to the rankings? or there is good value on it even is not related? Thanks! Adriana
Link Building | | extrememarquees0 -
Google dosent care that much about links lately?
Google dosent care that much about links lately or crawl started beeing more intelegent about it? Do you feel any changes?
Link Building | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0