Site Wide Footer Links Exception, Any Advice ?
-
I was reading the following Q&A on site wide footer links,
http://moz.com/community/q/site-wide-links-from-another-domain-could-these-cause-a-problem
I feel my situation is slightly different however,we have lots of international sites linking to each other through these links like our sites for different counties and languages so our German, French and Spanish sites,
http://www.cirrusresearch.co.uk/
Our main UK site has always ranked very well and has never really had a problem despite always having had these followed sitewide footer links, Because of this we regularly get high amount of visitors performing English language searches from different counties and i don't think it is a bad thing having more country/language specific sites of ours available in the footer for visitors that may prefer a more localized site,
Our main website has to be at least 10+ years old at least, has a lot of strong links compared to our competitors, but the smaller German and Spanish sites are relatively smaller in size and most only 1-2 years old, my big fear is that these smaller sites would not be able to stand on there own without these footer links from our main site,
After reading the community question caused me to question this ?, should i take a leap of faith and no-follow all of these site wide footer links connecting all of our sites ? we never really had a problem ranking so i don't really see the need but would this be the best thing to do ?
Thank you,
James
-
Thanks,
As long as we seem to rank well i don't really see it as a problem, i do track visitors using these links also,
Thank you your answer has reassured me,
James
-
I would keep them followed - they are your websites, and genuine links so why not? Lots of websites do this naturally without a problem.
If any of the sites are duplicates where the only differences are regional you should make sure everything is set up to Google's liking. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/video-expanding-your-site-to-more.html
You could remove any keywords from the anchor text if you're worried e.g. instead of
Noiselevelmeter.com | Sound Level Meters for the US & Canada just keep the URL as the link:
Noiselevelmeter.com - Sound Level Meters for the US & CanadaOr alternatively link to the other websites from your homepage only.
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
-
Troubled QA Platform - Site Map vs Site Structure
I'm running a Q&A forum that was built prioritizing UX over SEO. This decision has cause a bit of a headache as we're 6 months into the project with 2278 Q&A pages with extremely minimal traffic coming from search engines. The structure has the following hiccups: A. The category navigation from the main Q&A page is entirely javascript and only navigable by users. B. We identify Google bots and send them to another version of the Q&A platform w/o javascript. Category links don't exist in this google bot version of the main Q&A page. On this Google version of the main Q&A page, the Pinterest-like tiles displaying individual Q&As are capped at 10. This means that the only way google bot can identify link juice being passed down to individual QAs (after we've directed them to this page) is through 10 random Q&As. C. All 2278 of the QAs are currently indexed in search. They are just indexed very very poorly in SERPs. My personal assumption, is that Google can't pass link juice to any of the Q&As (poor SERP) but registers them from the site map so it gets included in Google's index. My dilemma has me struggling between two different decisions: 1. Update the navigation in the header to remove the javascript and fundamentally change the look and feel of the Q&A platform. This will allow Google bot to navigate through Expert category links to pass link juice to all Q&As. or 2. Update the redirected main Q&A page to include hard coded category links with 100s of hard coded Q&As under each category page. Make it similar, ugly, flat and efficient for the crawling bots. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I need to find a solution as soon as possible.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TQContent0 -
Site rankings down
Our site is over 10 years old and has consistently ranked highly in google.co.uk for over 100 key phrases. Until the middle of April, we were 7th for 'nuts and bolts' and 5th for 'bolts and nuts' - we have been around these positions for 5-6 years easily now. Our rankings dropped mid-April, but now (presumably as a result of Penguin 2.0), we've seen larger decreases across the board. We are now 5th page on 'nuts and bolts', and second page on 'bolts and nuts'. Can anyone please shed any light on this? Although we'd fallen some before Penguin 2.0, we've fallen quite a bit further since. So I'm wondering if it's that. We do still rank well on our more specialised terms though - 'imperial bolts', 'bsw bolts', 'bsf bolts', we're still top 5. We've lost out with the more generic terms. In the past we did a bit of (relevant) blog commenting and obtained some business directory links, before realising the gain was tiny if at all. Are those likely to be the issue? I'm guessing so. It's hard to know which to get rid of though! Now, I use social media sparingly, just Facebook, Twitter and G+. The only linkbuilding I do now is by sending polite emails to people who run classic car clubs that would use our bolts, stuff like that. I've had a decent response from that, and a few have become customers directly. Here's our link profile if anyone would be kind enough as to have a look: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.thomassmithfasteners.com Also, SEOMOZ says we have too many links on our homepage (107) - the dropdown navigation is the culprit here. Should I simply get rid of the dropdown and take users to the categories? Any advice here would be appreciated before I make changes! If anyone wants to take a look at the site, the URL is in the link profile above - I'm terrified of posting links anywhere now! Thanks for your time, and I'd be very grateful for any advice. Best Regards, Stephen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stephenshone1 -
Micro sites?
Hi, I have been speaking to seo firms regarding strategies and they mentioned setting up micro sites under domains that are relevant. i.e setting up armanidoamin.co.uk and we use it as a blog type site to update all info, product reviews, news relating to armani. Whats peoples thoughts on this? Does it work? Is it worth the effort? Im not so sure but obviously looking for ideas. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YNWA0 -
Worthwhile to have global footer links?
About Us, FAQ, Site Map, Terms & Privacy - I know rarely viewed by users (at least on my website), so why keep in global footer across all pages, since one could argue it will dilute some link juice to more important pages?Why not just keep on homepage only? What is argument for having links to these pages across all pages on a site? Is there any SEO value?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | knielsen0 -
Optimal site structure for travel site
Hi there, I am seo-managing a travel website where we are going to make a new site structure next year. We have about 4000 pages on the site at the moment. The structure is only 2-levels at the moment: Level 1: Homepage Level 2: All other pages (4000 individual pages - (all with different urls)) We are adding another 2-3 levels, but we have a challenge: We have potentially 2 roads to the same product (e.g. "phuket diving product") domain.com/thailand/activities/diving/phuket-diving-product.asp domain.com/activities/diving/thailand/phuket-diving-product.asp I would very much appreciate your view on the problem: How do I solve this dilemma/challenge from a SEO standpoint? I want to avoid DC if possible, I also only want one landing page - for many reasons. And usability is of course also very important. Best regards, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sembseo0 -
What url should i link to?
Hi everybody, after some discussions i decided to keep my page on the old domain for better seo rankings; However, the new third level domain sounds better: poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it.... the question is: i'm going to recive a high value link and i don't know if i should link directly to the old adress ( www.zenucchi.it/ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.it ) where the page is located or to the new one by making a 301 redirect to the previous. what's best? and second question what's the way to keep the page on this adress ( www.zenucchi.it/ITA/poltrona-frau-brescia.it ) but show poltronafraubrescia.zenucchi.it as url? thank you guido
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | guidoboem0 -
Does a page on a site with high domain authority build page authority easier? i.e. less inbound links?
Is this also why people build backlinks to their BBB profiles, Yellowpages Profiles, etc. i.e. why do people build backlinks to other pages that link to them? Wouldn't it be more beneficial to just build that backlink directly to your target?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adriandg0 -
Aside from creative link bait, what's a solid link building strategy involve?
All things considered, directories, blogs, articles, press releases, forums, social profiles, student discount pages, etc, what do you consider to be a strong, phased, link building strategy? I'm talking beyond natural/organic link bait, since many larger accounts will not allow you to add content to their website or take 6 months to approve a content strategy. I've got my own list, but would love to hear what the community considers to be a strong, structured, timeline-based strategy for link building.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stevewiideman1