Link Building with links in footer of Word Press Themes- Is This BLack Hat??
-
I See lots of free word press themes with links in footer like Kids Headphones | Colombia Classifieds | Broadway Tickets Is this a valid white hat link building method? What if the theme looked like a particular industry and the links related to the industry would that be better?
-
Hi Joel,
you might want to consider reading questions more carefully before you reply.
This has nothing to do with removing links but building an distributing a theme with links in it!
-
If you put a base64 obfuscated link in the footer of your WordPress then I'll hunt you down and gut you like a fish ಠ_ಠ
The problem with those footer links is that they look spammy to both users and to search engines. Your theme could end up on all manner of sites with links to things they're irrelevant too, even if you try and skin the theme to be relevant.
Ultimately it's no longer a good way of building links, not least of all because people have such a huge choice of themes now even exceptional ones don't find many homes. Plus, even if you make a condition of using the theme, a lot of people are going to remove them.
As Riggz said it would only really not look bad if you were a design company, but it's been abused so much in the past I would think that they're almost entirely discounted by search engines.
-
I've actually wondered the same thing... In that particular example, it seems they are injecting a wide variety of keywords into the footer, and it looks kind of fishy.
In general the only link I put in the footer (beside quick links to less visited areas of the website) would be credit for the web company in some way, "Site by X", 'Website Design by X", "Hosted on X CMS" (only using 1 of these per 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
-
Can affiliate links affect DA?
Hey guys, over the past two months my DA has gone down from 17 to 12, and I have no dura what could have caused it. I started putting in some Amazon affiliate links in my posts - could that be the reason why? Also, I have about 30 backlinks from a blog with a spam score of 11% - could this also be affecting it in any way?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AmyAed0 -
Search Results Showing Additional info/Links
Did I miss something? I was looking at search result listings this morning and noticed that Walmart has additional information at the bottom of their (non-paid (I think)) search results. Please see the attached image and you'll notice links to "Item Description - Product Warranty and Service - Specifications - Gifting Plans" How are they doing this? I just noticed the same on one of our competitors listings so It's not just Walmart and the links are item specific. (I have update the image) Z0yqKtO.jpg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BWallacejr1 -
Are back links from audio sites any good?
In light of G's view of links from directories and other sources I have heard that links for audio sites like soundcloud.com can be beneficial. Has anyone had any positive experiences building likes from sources like this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Aikijeff0 -
Link Building Plan Need some tips
Okay so I want to start focusing on SEO for my Web design company and I have been reading and reading and am now working on my off-page optimization and have some questions. My words are competitive words and a few of them are finally increasing to top 500 and a few in top 100. My current MozRank for my domain is 2.28, but my mozbar shows my homepage to be MozRank to be 3.35 Link Building Plan -Around 50 Directory submissions to high PR directories and high MozRank domains Free listings Paid Listings -3-5 articles written for guest posts Around 25 Local Business directories such as brownbook.net, whitepages, etc -Around 20 dofollow forum profile creation and backlinks from signatures -Squidioo Lens Creation( I will be creating high quality content related my website which would be web design, internet marketing, seo services.) -Hubpages Creation My question is should the content used on squidioo be 100% original, like can I post the content to other directories as well? -Article Directories Okay so from what I've read this is method doesn't really give much benefit with the recent updates, is this true or should I still at least submit some articles to article directories. I am also confused wouldn't distributing your articles to article directories be considered duplicate content? 20-25 Blog Comments on related blogs that support dofollow blog commenting, also will build some nofollow blog comment links for link diversity
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | azokaei0 -
Link Building Agency refuses to report Hours of work completed, is this normal?
A link building agency we are interested in is promising to work until X number of whitehat (manual) links are acquired for $YYYY each month. They say they don't report on hours, but instead focus on results. Is this common or is it a red flag?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | pbhatt0 -
Penguin Update and Infographic Link Bait
Is it still ok to use infographics for link bait now that the penguin update has rolled out? Are there any techniques that should be avoided when promoting an infographic? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eddiejsd1 -
Are there *truly* any white-hat link-building tactics?
With our new knowledge -- yielded from J.C. Penney, Forbes, Overstock, content farms, et al -- that the link graph/link profile can be algorithmically mined by search engines to uncover non-natural patterns of links occuring over time, is there any level of link-building that is safe to engage in? If so, then what are those "bright white"-hat tactics that are 100% safe for a site to use?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jcolman0