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.
How good is a backlink that's in the footer
-
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!
-
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 -
Ryan,
I value your opinion and Anthony's too.
I will relay the information to my client.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
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
-
Rankings Dropped After New Backlinks.
I have a low-traffic website (under 100 unique visitors per day) and I've encountered a strange issue started yesterday morning. I acquired three back-links, one of these back-links is contextual and the other two are site-wide. The site-wide back-links are from PA 40+ blogs. It looks like the back-links are already indexed by Google. Despite these new back-links, my rankings across multiple keywords have dropped several positions. I'm new to SEO, but I would assume new back-links would improve my rankings. None of these back-links are low quality links, they are from real established blogs with high domain and page authority values. Could anyone give me insights into why my rankings may have dropped with new back-links?
Link Building | | poke11 -
Backlinks from the Same Domain (But Different Pages)
Wayyy back when (in the days of yore) Mr Cutts spelled out in a video that page rank is distributed equally between the external links on the page. If there are two links on a page, each gets passed 50% of the available page rank etc. (Perhaps an oversimplification but bear with me). As a result of this, the company I worked for at the time (this was the dark ages when sidebar homepage links were in vogue) decreed that we would only ever approach a site about a link for a client once, as additional links had little extra SEO Value. Now you could argue that if there are 5 external links, each acquiring 20% of the power, and your site has 2 of those, you are getting 40% of the power, but lets forget the basic math for a minute. I have scoured the web and Mr Cutts' videos and I cannot find the answer to my question: If my site (Site A) has a backlink from SiteB Page 1, and a backlink from SiteB page 2 - does this count as two separate links in the eyes of Google? If the SAME site links out to my site, linking to different pages in different posts, does this give me more SEO benefit? Thanks for your time!
Link Building | | Turkey0 -
Backlinks from non-relevant site
There's a forum I used to participate in that allows you to include a link to your website in your signature block. I have over 500 posts in the forum so that provides a lot of backlinks to my website. However, I recently decided to remove my website link from my signature for two reasons: The forum is 95-99% dead. Hardly anyone uses it anymore. BTW, the website that houses the forum is still popular within is niche (articles, etc). Just the forum appears to be dead. The website and its forum really have no connection whatsoever to my business. I'm in a completely different niche. However, I have no idea if I've made the right decision. Will removing my signature and the backlinks hurt my site? Or will it help it since the other site really isn't related to mine? Thanks for any thoughts on this!
Link Building | | emh19690 -
PR1 and PR2 backlinks
We're doing some content marketing. I've heard that it is a good idea to target even PR1 and PR2 sites (small DA sites). I'm concerned about these sites disappearing after a few months, as we've found that losing a backlink can sting a bit and be worse than never having it. Though this isn't as big a deal any more. Anyways, can somebody say when a PR1/PR2 backlink would be appropriate to go after? Some of them would be easy and if it's appropriate I'd like to include them. So far they would only pass our standards if they are Above PR0 Look like a white hat, quality site from the outside Have a clean backlink profile Look like they're going to stick around Successful Social Media Accounts a plus What are you guys' criteria for including these sites? Do you gain value from them?
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
Is it ok for a web design company to have a branded footer link on their client's sites?
Now I know that in general footer links to your site from another site are bad...this is because they are very often spammy...however I like to think that Google is pretty smart and I am of the opinion that a web design company should be able to link back to their own site. Here's why: If a visitor comes across a site that they love the design of, and they want a new website built...why shouldn't they be able to click through to the web designers site? (as long as the client is happy to link to it of course) I also feel that if there are a whole bunch of high authority/pagerank websites have been designed by a web design company and they therefore have a footer link pointing to them, it's probably a pretty good sign that they're a good web designer. Is it not? In saying this I think that the link anchor text should be branded rather than keywords. For example I usually write "Web Design by Static Shift" I'm interested to hear people's thoughts. Am I being blinded by my bias? Thoughts aside, and onto the facts...what are people's experiences with footer links for a web design company. Do they help or hinder?
Link Building | | Static_Shift3 -
How important are different class c subnets and ip's
We're thinking of launching several blogs in our niche and 'building them up' organically, and then linking naturally from them to our sites (very conservatively). I was wondering if we should buy entirely separate hosting for these blogs and how important are separate ip addresses and class c subnets (shown on majestic SEO tools for instance). Is it possible to create a set of authoritative blogs in a niche and have them be a little 'neighborhood' within the same shared hosting provider (obv similiar class c or even same ip).
Link Building | | ilyaelbert0 -
What are "naked backlinks"?
Hello SEOmozers! I have a question for you all. What are "naked backlinks"? Can you also give an example? Thank you! woo aka STPseo
Link Building | | STPseo0 -
Has anyone seen positive results from using Submiteaze to submit to directories? I know an SEM agency that uses it for clients' link building campaigns, but I don't know if it is worth buying. Are there better alternatives?
I would like to start a link building initiative at my company for a new website, and would like to know if the value of the links built using Submiteaze would be worth the money.
Link Building | | pbhatt0