Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Static Links in Sidebar Hurting SEO?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Static Links in Sidebar Hurting SEO?

    Technical SEO
    4
    5
    1524
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • DemiGR
      DemiGR last edited by

      Our website currently has a sidebar/widget area that appears on almost all pages throughout of entire site (350 page domain).  In that sidebar, we have some static links and some non-static links. Right now there are:

      6 Related Post Links - Non-Static
      1 - Call To Action - Static to a landing page
      10 Calculators - Static - These calculators I think are very useful to our users (financial website).

      So in total 17 total sidebar links, 11 static links, and 6 which change based on the content of the page.  Do you think these static links from an SEO perspective can be hurting us? Is there some sort of best practice for sidebar links in regards to quantity as well as static vs non-static?

      Thanks!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Smileworks_Liverpool
        Smileworks_Liverpool Subscriber last edited by

        Tons of great advice here.  My responsive design drops the sidebar to below 5% of the average scroll depth so I binned it and nothing bad happened to pages per session or time on site or bouncerate or any of the important user signals.  I do have a site-wide 'BOOK AN EMERGENCY APPOINTMENT' button but people use it and we're killing it for emergencies.  It's one of our best catagories and is hotly competitive.  It's in red and replaced a trustpilot widget that was taking people off site.

        One of the best decisions I ever made and I was tearing my hair out about site wide links messing with SEO but it didn't happen for us.  All the google results were 'no it's SPAMMY' - but they are just a load of content creators jumping on a bandwagon, here in the Moz community, as you can see, things are more nuanced. 🙂

        So if it's relevant and helpful keep it.  Do you have Hotjar.  Allows you to see what peope are clicking on.

        SWL and footer links Is one of those where spammy sites use it so people say - "ooh don't ever use it" - but you must not be that binary.  If it helps the users then keep it.  In my case hardly anyone used them so I dropped them in favour of one important button.

        But an additional bump in pageviews and time on site because people are navigating around your site is absolute gold.  So you must encourage that.  but remember Cialdini's jam experiment.  More than three choices is going to induce decisional paralysis especially when you have only a second and the user is almost making unconscious decisions navigating. It's like driving.  You're not thinking what you're doing - it's automatic. So make is fluid and easy and watch the user feedback signals.

        How about  "Learn more",  "buy something" or 'back to navigation'

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • EGOL
          EGOL @DemiGR last edited by

          That's the way a lot of people have their responsiveness configured.  There are many who drop the sidebar.  Others move elements of the sidebar into the content to make the options visible higher in the page.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • DemiGR
            DemiGR @EGOL last edited by

            Yeah I was talking about desktop when talking about the sidebar, but in mobile it does move just below the main content and is still visible.

            EGOL 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • EGOL
              EGOL last edited by

              When I hear the word "sidebar" these days, I think of a desktop site.   I don't think of "sidebars" on a mobile site.

              If you are talking "desktop" and you have a mobile version of your site, does that sidebar appear in any format on the mobile site?   If not, your sidebar will not be an SEO consideration once Google and your site move to the mobile index.  At that time you will lose any SEO benefit (or curse) that the sidebar added to the desktop version of your website.

              This is the issue about the mobile first index that very few people are talking about and a lot of people havn't even thought about.

              DemiGR 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • musthavemarketing

                Express js and SEO?

                Hi fellow Mozzers, I have been tasked with providing some SEO recommendations for a website that is to be built using express.js and Angular.  I wondered whether anyone has had any experience in such a framework? On checking a website built in this and viewing as a GoogleBot etc using the following tools it appears as though most of the content is invisible: http://www.webconfs.com/search-engine-spider-simulator.php http://www.browseo.net/ Obviously this is a huge issue and wonder if there are any workarounds, or reccomendations to assist (even if means moving away from this  - would love to hear about it)

                Technical SEO | | musthavemarketing
                2
              • mundsack

                Is SEO effected of putting an external link in the primary navigation of a website?

                I have a customer, www.xxx.com.  This site has good traffic, low bounce rate (28%), 2:00 min avg time on site, and 45% return visitor rating.  No spam rankings, etc.  Good load time. Another site, www.yyy.com, has sent out a request for them to add them as a new link in www.xxx.com's primary navigation - using a title such as "abc" (not the name of the company or site of yyy.com).   This second site, www.yyy.com, has a bounce rate of 98%, avg time on site is :30, and 10.2% return visitor rate.  No spam flags noted in Open Site explorer.  Plus they are asking other sites similar to www.xxx.com to do the same thing. Questions/Concerns and Feedback appreciated: Will yyy.com's analytics and quality pass back to xxx.com and cause Google or algorithms to flag or penalize xxx.com?  (It ranks #1 for quite a few things.)  The relevancy between the sites is good -same industry, same business objectives. From a usability standpoint, isn't it more appropriate to place a link to another website in a different way? e.g. a promotional graphic wit a link or anchor text links? Isn't it more appropriate to ask another business for links - not using the primary nav of a site?  (It seems yyy.com is essentially asking other sites for 'free advertising/promotion.' Thanks!

                Technical SEO | | mundsack
                0
              • bigrat95

                Coming soon SEO

                Hi, I was wondering what is the best practice to redirect all the links juice by redirecting all the pages of your website to a coming soon page. The coming soon page will point to the domain.com, not to a subfolder. Should I move the entire website to a subfolder and redirect this folder to the coming soon page? Thanks

                Technical SEO | | bigrat95
                0
              • Liggins

                Updating inbound links vs. 301 redirecting the page they link to

                Hi everyone, I'm preparing myself for a website redesign and finding conflicting information about inbound links and 301 redirects. If I have a URL (we'll say website.com/website) that is linked to by outside sources, should I get those outside sources to update their links when I change the URL to website.com/webpage? Or is it just as effective from a link juice perspective to simply 301 redirect the old page to the new page? Are there any other implications to this choice that I may want to consider? Thanks!

                Technical SEO | | Liggins
                0
              • yatesandcojewelers

                Links from Instructables.com?

                This is a silly newbie question.  But will posting on www.instructables.com with some valuable content and url link back to my site help with "linking"? Or do they put a no-follow on all links on their site? Thanks for answering! Ron

                Technical SEO | | yatesandcojewelers
                0
              • tvkiley

                Does Yelp pass link juice?

                This is probably a profoundly obvious question, but I can't seem to find an explicit answer on the internet, so I'll ask it here: Yelp's links out to local business websites are not nofollow'd, but they go through a javascript-based redirect. My understanding is that javascript redirected links do not pass link juice, so a link from a yelp profile will not directly impact my page authority; however, it looks like yelp does use nofollow judiciously for internal links, so I don't understand why they would allow follow for these "useless" outbound links. Do yelp's javascript-redirected links pass link juice?

                Technical SEO | | tvkiley
                0
              • glennfriesen

                Does the Referral Traffic from a Link Influence the SEO Value of that Link?

                If a link exists, and nobody clicks on it, could it still be valuable for SEO? Say I have 1000 links on 500 sites with Domain Authority ranging from 35 to 80. Let's pretend that 900 of those links generate referral traffic. Let's assume that the remaining 100 links are spread between 10 domains of the 500, but nobody ever clicks on them. Are they still valuable? Should an SEO seek to earn more links like those, even though they don't earn referral traffic? Does Google take referral data into account in evaluating links? 5343313-zelda-rogers-albums-zelda-pictures-duh-what-else-would-they-be-picture3672t-link-looks-so-lonely.jpg Sad%20little%20link.jpg

                Technical SEO | | glennfriesen
                1
              • Aspedia

                Add to Cart Link

                We have shopping cart links (<a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p"></a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">The SEOMoz site crawls are flagging these as a massive number of 302 redirects and I also wonder what sort of effect this is having on linkjuice flowing around the site. </a> <a href's,="" not="" input="" buttons)="" that="" link="" to="" a="" url="" along="" the="" lines="" of="" cart="" add="" 123&return="/product/123. </p">I can see several possible solutions: Make the links nofollow Make the links input buttons Block /cart/add with robots.txt Make the links 301 instead of 302 Make the links javascript (probably worst care) All of these would result in an identical outcome for the UX, but are very different solutions. What would you suggest?</a>

                Technical SEO | | Aspedia
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.