Are footer links at the end of each page still considered to be a valid tactic?
-
This is pretty much an opinion question, I was under the impression that footer links had been devalued almost to the point of uselessness, and if they weren't going to be of any real use to the users of the site why bother.
I was speaking to a web developer though whose opinion I do largely trust who remains very pro footer links, and I was wondering what everyone else thought.
Am I being too dismissive, or are footer links on the way out?
-
Google won't use the keyword anchor text in those links so much, but will follow them. They're also very user friendly, and are pretty much expected now a days.
-
From a user experience perspective, I like putting "exit" links in the footer so that when the user reaches the end of the page, he has some relevant links to continue reading content on my websites.
From a SEO perspective, indeed, Google doesn't seem to pass a lot of linkjuice to those links, as long as it identify them as footer links.
-
Google know's it's in the footer (pretty much always) so it will treat it like a footer link. No big deal, just not as potent as a content area link.
-
I'm not sure footer links necessarily carry much SEo weith anymore, but from a user perspective I definitely find them 100% useful.
If I'm reading a long blog post on SEOMoz for example, the links at the bottom allow me to navigate where I want to go next without having to scroll back to the top of the page.
It is also always the first place I would look to find contact information for a website and also for a TOS/Privacy policy.
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
-
Should I add canonical links to pages that are redirected?
Hello! I am a little confused concerning canonical links. I have several URLs that all access my page, but I redirect them all. A lot of places I am told to redirect them or use canonicals. Other places, I read that I should always use canonicals. What is the right way for me? If I should use canonicals as well as redirects, which links should I do this on? I redirect my pages like this: http to https:
On-Page Optimization | | hermanok
http://example.com -> https://example.com www to non-www:
https://www.example.com -> https://example.com Remove trailing slashes
https://example.com/ -> https://example.com Would-be 404-requests to index.php?p=$1
https://example.com/home -> https://example.com/index.php?p=home ( show as https://example.com/home ) Example:
http://www.example.com/home/ -> http://www.example.com/home/ -> https://example.com/home/ -> https://example.com/home -> https://example.com/index.php?p=home ( shows as https://example.com/home ) Thank you!0 -
Which is better? One dynamically optimised page, or lots of optimised pages?
For the purpose of simplicity, we have 5 main categories in the site - let's call them A, B, C, D, E. Each of these categories have sub-category pages e.g. A1, A2, A3. The main area of the site consists of these category and sub-category pages. But as each product comes in different woods, it's useful for customers to see all the product that come in a particular wood, e.g. walnut. So many years ago we created 'woods' pages. These pages replicate the categories & sub-categories but only show what is available in that particular wood. And of course - they're optimised much better for that wood. All well and good, until recently, these specialist page seem to have dropped through the floor in Google. Could be temporary, I don't know, and it's only a fortnight - but I'm worried. Now, because the site is dynamic, we could do things differently. We could still have landing pages for each wood, but of spinning off to their own optimised specific wood sub-category page, they could instead link to the primary sub-category page with a ?search filter in the URL. This way, the customer is still getting to see what they want. Which is better? One page per sub-category? Dynamically filtered by search. Or lots of specific sub-category pages? I guess at the heart of this question is? Does having lots of specific sub-category pages lead to a large overlap of duplicate content, and is it better keeping that authority juice on a single page? Even if the URL changes (with a query in the URL) to enable whatever filtering we need to do.
On-Page Optimization | | pulcinella2uk0 -
Can I use nofollow to limit the number of links on a page?
My website is an ecommerce and we have on homepage about 470 links ! 1. We have a top bar with my account, login, faq, home, contact us and link to a content page. 2 . Then we have multistore selection 3. Then we have the departament menu, with several parants + child category links 4. Then we have a banner 5. Then we have a list of the recently sold and new products. 6. then we have an image grid with the most important cms/content pages (like faq, about us, etc) 7. then we have footer, with all info pages, contact us, about us, my account etc. There are some links that are repeted 2, 3 times. For a user it is easier to find the informations but I'm not sure how search bots (google) deal with that. So I was thinking on how can I have around 150 links to be followed. To remove the links from the page is not possible. What about to add nofollow to repeted links and some child category, as the spider will crawl the father and will access child on the next page? Is this a good strategy?
On-Page Optimization | | qgairsoft0 -
Will pushing a visitor to a conversion page hosted on a 3rd-party domain hurt the landing page ranking
Had an interesting question from a client. The client has a page that is optimized for a specific term. The goal of the page is to push users to sign-up for a trial. The trial registration (conversion) page is hosted by a third-party. Will pushing users to the conversion page cannibalize the SEO authority of the landing page. My reflexive answer is to say no, but now am not so sure.
On-Page Optimization | | infoblue0 -
How many outbound links is too many outbound links?
As a part of our SEO strategy, we have been focusing on writing several high quality articles with unique content. In these articles we regularly link to other websites when they are high quality, authoritative sites. Typically, the articles are 500 words or more and have 3-5 outbound links, but in some cases there are as many as 7 or 8 outbound links. Before we get too carried away with outbound links, I wanted to get some opinions on how many outbound links we should be trying to include and more information on how the outbound links work. Do they pass our website's authority on to the other website? Could our current linking strategy cause future SEO problems? Finally, do you have any suggestions for guidelines we should be using? Thank you for your help!
On-Page Optimization | | airnwater0 -
Why is the seomoz showing it crawled 3 pages when i only have 2 pages?
I had seomoz crawl my site. I only have 2 pages. The site url is www.autoinsurancefremontca.com.
On-Page Optimization | | Greenpeak0 -
Do anchor links pointing to bottom/top of page count as link?
As the title says: Do anchor links pointing to bottom/top of page count as link? This page: http://www.betxpert.com/forum/bookmakere/vis/ladbrokes-kommentar I has over 300 links, but I don't see that many links. Is it the "#15" and the top/bottom of page anchors that count? Is this harmful in terms of link juice? -Rasmus
On-Page Optimization | | rasmusbang0 -
Footers... Good or Bad?
I know in the past footers have been seen as a bad idea. I need to get up to date. Does having footer links that point to your own site with anchor texts keywords create problems? or is it safe to have? Will it do anything to our google rankings? Is it going to penalize us? As well, how many is acceptable, do I want all 77 links or have 15 with sub-categories?
On-Page Optimization | | HCGDiet0