Massive site-wide internal footer links to doorway pages: how bad is this?
-
My company has stuffed several hundred links into the footer of every page. Well, technically not the footer, as they're right at the end of the body tag, but basically the same thing.
They are formatted as follows:
[" href="http://example.com/springfield_oh_real_estate.htm">" target="_blank">http://example.com/springfield_pa_real_estate.htm">](</span><a class= "http://example.com/springfield_oh_real_estate.htm")springfield, pa real estate
These direct to individual pages that contain the same few images and variations the following text that just replace the town and state:
_Springfield, PA Real Estate - Springfield County
[images]
This page features links to help you Find Listings and Homes for sale in the Springfield area MLS, Springfield Real Estate Agents, and Springfield home values. Our free real estate services feature all Springfield and Springfield suburban areas.
We also have information on Springfield home selling, Springfield home buying, financing and mortgages, insurance and other realty services for anyone looking to sell a home or buy a home in Springfield.
And if you are relocating to Springfield or want Springfield relocation information we can help with our Relocation Network._
The bolded text links to our internal site pages for buying, selling, relocation, etc.
Like I said, this is repeated several hundred times, on every single page on our site.
In our XML sitemap file, there are links to:
http://www.example.com/Real_Estate/City/Springfield/
http://www.example.com/Real_Estate/City/Springfield/Homes/
http://www.example.com/Real_Estate/City/Springfield/Townhomes/That direct to separate pages with a Google map result for properties for sale in Springfield.
It's accompanied by the a boilerplate version of this:
_Find Springfield Pennsylvania Real Estate for sale on www.example.com - your complete source for all Springfield Pennsylvania real estate. Using www.example.com, you can search the entire local Multiple Listing Service (MLS) for up to date Springfield Pennsylvania real estate for sale that may not be available elsewhere.
This includes every Springfield Pennsylvania property that's currently for sale and listed on our local MLS. Example Company is a fully licensed Springfield Pennsylvania real estate provider._
Google Webmaster Tools is reporting that some of these pages have over 30,000 internal links on our site. However, GWT isn't reporting any manual actions that need to be addressed.
How blatantly abusive and spammy is this? At best, Google doesn't care a spit about it , but worst case is this is actively harming our SERP rankings.
What's the best way to go about dealing with this? The site did have Analytics running, but the company lost the account information years ago, otherwise I'd check the numbers to see if we were ever hit by Panda/Penguin. I just got a new Analytics account implemented 2 weeks ago. Of course it's still using deprecated object values so I don't even know how accurate it is. Thanks everyone!
-
So every page has several hundred links to spammy duplicate pages? This is a bad thing.
First off, link equity leaving every page on your site would be split between all these several hundred links whether your NoFollow them or not.
Second, the fact that they are essentially duplicate of each other and there are potentially hundreds of these pages means that your site is likely hurting from thin content penalties.
Third, that image makes it look like old school 90s keyword stuffing. Which is just all sorts of wrong.
My assessment is that Yes... this is hurting your site.
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
-
Consolidating small sites into one big site
Hi I have several small review sites in multiple categories and want to consolidate them into a single review site(aged domain I just bought) I'd redirect the old sites to the new one. If I just copied all the old articles onto the new website with solid DA, would this work or would Google think Im trying to start a PBN? Thanks! Eddie
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | calentador20190 -
Spam signals from old company site are hurting new company site, but we can't undo the redirect.
My client was forced to change its domain name last year (long story). We were largely able to regain our organic rankings via 301-redirects. Recently, the rankings for the new domain have begun to plummet. Nothing specific took place that could have caused any ranking declines on the new site. However, when we analyze links to the OLD site, we are seeing a lot of link spam being built to that old domain over recent weeks and months. We have no idea where these are coming from but they appear to be negatively impacting our new site. We cannot dismantle the redirects as the old site has hundreds, if not thousands, of quality links pointing to it, and many customers are accustomed to going to that home page. So those redirects need to stay in place. We have already disavowed all the spam we have found on the old Search Console. We are continuing to do so as we find new spam links. But what are we supposed to do about this spam negatively impacting our new site? FYI we have not received any messages in the search console.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | FPD_NYC1 -
Thousands of links - Am I being sabatoged?!
It seems that I am being sabatoged. I have been disavowing links every month because there seems to be more and more spam links that are popping up on my site and I'm not doing ANYTHING to allow that to happen. Does anyone have any insight? A. do you think I am being sabatoged? B. Is there a way to find out who is doing it?!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Veebs0 -
Bad link backs out of my control
I have a big concern with my website. Recently I have been combing through the back links that I have been able to find associated with my web domain. Almost half of the links- 52 links- are from kinder-host. They are from what looks like could be valid sources, like babies-r-is.com/kinder-host.com or babies.kinder-host.com/page/6 etc. but they are junk. Some of these links are from articles I've written that are ripped off and placed on these websites along with my links. Some of the sites I can't even find the link but its there somewhere. Another 40 of the links are from attracta.com and although I can tell I have links on there to my website as well, I don't even see the link on the page and it is not related to my website. It's another junk site. So, I have bad link backs and no control over it. My understanding is this is potentially very harmful to my website! What can I do about it?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JAGA0 -
Big Brands Still Paying For Links!
We have been spending a lot of time creating unique and relevant content that is helpful to users in order to garner natural links. However, I still see large companies getting paid links to their site. They still rank despite the paid links - many higher that before thanks to the increased brand/domain authority bias by Google. I have seen a number of blogs with posts that have dofollow links to sites like Amazon and Dirtdevil. Are small businesses just getting buried or am I being too cynical?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | inhouseseo0 -
How Do You Determine If A Link Is Quality?
What tools and signals do you use to determine if a link is quality or not? How can you tell if a link is going to hurt your ranking?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | anchorwave0 -
Can someone explain how a site with no DA, links or MozTrust, MozRank can rank #1 in the SERPs?
I do SEO for a legal site in the UK and one of the keywords I'm targeting is 'Criminal Defence Solicitors'. If you search this term in Google.co.uk this site comes top www.cdsolicitors.co.uk, yet in my mozbar it has 0 links, 0 DA etc, I noticed it top a few weeks ago and thought something spammy was going on; I thought if I was patient, Google would remove it, however it still hasn't. Can someone explain how it is top in the SERPs? I've never seen this before. thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TobiasM0 -
What on-page/site optimization techniques can I utilize to improve this site (http://www.paradisus.com/)?
I use a Search Engine Spider Simulator to analyze the homepage and I think my client is using black hat tactics such as cloaking. Am I right? Any recommendations on to improve the top navigation under Resorts pull down. Each of the 6 resorts listed are all part of the Paradisus brand, but each resort has their own sub domain.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Melia0