How good is a backlink that's in the footer

[BobGW]

Hello,

The strongest site in our industry (according to domain authority and excluding wikipedia) said that they would put a sitewide link to us in their footer. We're good friends with them.

It would be right next to the copyright.

Our site is nlpca (dot) com

The partner site is nlpu (dot) com

The link will say something like "More NLP Training" with the "NLP" as the link. We're targeting the keyword "NLP"

How much will this move us up for the keyword "NLP"? Right now we're on the 3rd page for that term.

I also want to make sure that it's a white hat move.

Thanks!

[Anthony_Trollope]

Frankly, sitewide links offer very little value these days to your overall link-profile. The engines simply don't like them as in a lot of cases they scream manipulation.

You might also be interested to know that according to the folks who contributed to the SEOMoz Ranking Factors, the vast majority said that sitewide links would devalue your overall metrics with varying degrees of severity.

Honestly, I'd try to negotiate a better placement and switch tact.

Best,
Anthony

[BobGW]

Ryan,

I value your opinion and Anthony's too.

I will relay the information to my client.

[BobGW]

Thank you Anthony,

I've had luck with this in the past since it's sitewide.

but I value the SEOMoz metrics.

Any further information you can provide would be great.

[RyanKent]

Hi Bob.

When you receive a link, there are several ways to weigh it's value. Mainly there is the direct value of users who will see the link and click on it to drive traffic to your site. A second consideration is how the link will help you improve search engine rankings.

In this case, you already have a link from the site from their Resources page. More links from the same site wont improve your number of linking root domains, so it wont diversify your link profile in that regard. Footer links are often not seen and rarely actually used. My question to you is, how often do you think a user might see the link and click on it? I would even suggest you test the idea with your analytics.

How much will this move us up for the keyword "NLP"?

Search engine rankings can move for various reasons without your making any change. With that in mind, I don't believe receiving a footer link from this site will have any positive effect on your rankings. With that said, it can't hurt so you are welcome to obtain the link. I would rather suggest you obtain a link in one of the sidebars, or perhaps a content link in their blogs or elsewhere.

[Anthony_Trollope]

Hey Bob,

There are a few considerations you need to keep in mind here.

The main one is whether or not this link is going to serve you any real benefit, especially being hidden away in the footer. It's a given that a link in the footer of the site will not serve anywhere near the same value as a link embedded within relevant and high quality original content. The amount of juice it will pass will be minimal in comparison (if that's the goal here).

The search engines have cottoned on to footer links and I feel they associate them with paid links. Whether they offer any real value from an SEO stand-point is not really a debating point within the industry (for further reading read SEOMoz's 2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors). Put yourself in the shoes of a website visitor, are they going to get any major benefit from a link in the footer? Doubtful. And the SE's know this. It's super easy to identify these links and penalise them accordingly.

If I were you I would go back to your partner and try to negotiate a link with a better placement. Even an link positioned within a nice piece of quality content should offer you more benefit than a link slapped in the footer of the site.

Best,
Anthony