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.
Do a bunch of footer internal links help or hurt?
-
We are an ecommerce site...
In days gone by, having a bunch of footer links with your top products / categories was a good idea - as it created a ton of internal links to these products.
Now, I am hearing that those links "dilute" the value of our other links on a page - and essentially, there is more harm than good from these.
Does anyone know what I am talking about (the olds days) and should we still be doing this?
Thanks
-
Hello Ted, yes they can hurt your site in a number of ways. Site owners tend to make these links anchor text rich, so if you've got a link in your footer saying 'Blue Widgets' then effectively you may have 30+ anchor text links from your own site. And yes, anchor text backlink ratios are calculated with the inclusion of internal links from your own site.
As you also mentioned, these footer links are draining the juice out of your main contextual links within in your main page's copy. Effectively, those nice internal silo links you send to your inner pages are being watered down by all of your dofollow footer links.
So do I make all of my footer and menu links no-follow then? And there's the problem. You won't find definitive answers on this because it's grey hat. Google will tell you that nofollow links are links that you don't want to vouch for. So are you going to send a signal to Google that tells them you don't trust internal links on your own site because you added the nofollow attribute to them?
And yes, whether the link is nofollow or not, it's still included in your overall anchor text ratios.
Now we move into PR sculpting. Google will tell you not to do that, and that PR sculpting doesn't work anyway. Is that because it still works very well indeed? Why are there so many authoritative sites that still use the nofollow attribute on some of their internal links? Don't they trust these internal links, or are they channeling link juice to the pages they want it diverted to.
If the rest of your link profile was pretty clean, and all of your offsite SEO was above board, then I think you'd be pretty unlucky to get a penalty from internal links coming from the footer of your own site.
One of my sites is ranking top three for many medium to semi-hard keywords that uses PR sculpting. Every single menu and footer link is nofollow. So the homepage has about 30 nofollow internal links on it, and only two contextual links in the main copy that link to the other inner pages that I wanted to rank.
That site has remained top 3 for over 1.5 years now without a hitch. This definitely isn't conclusive evidence by any means. The site itself is very strong and has great content too, but it seems as though all of the nofollow links haven't affected it negatively. And the inner pages that I sent all of the juice to are ranking #1 too. In my opinion PR sculpting does work but I also think it's dicey.
In your situation, I would maybe just dial down the exact match anchor text and change them to partial match links. Google do devalue your internal footer links to a certain degree but there's no black and white answer. If your site is big, then your generating 100's of anchor text links, and although they're devalued, it's still a bit dicey.
-
Yes, there was a period when footers were getting extremely large (and link laden) in order to try and drive as much link strength as possible to internal pages, and this was spread out through out the site. Here's a blog post from a couple of years ago that looks into it even more thoroughly: http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/internal-linking-strategies-for-2012-and-beyond. But both Moz and Zappos have thinned down their footer links though from even this example. Rand also goes into general home page design (and why people have moved away from keyword stuffing on it) here: http://a-moz.groupbuyseo.org/blog/what-should-i-put-on-the-homepage-whiteboard-friday, which also helps get to footer links in a round about way. Cheers!
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
-
City and state link stuffing in footer
A competitor has links to every state in the U.S., every county in our state and nearby states, and every city in those nearby states. All with corresponding link text and titles that lead to pages with thin, duplicate content. They consistently rank high in the SERPS and have for years. What gives--I mean, isn't this something that should get you penalized?
On-Page Optimization | | nkolson0 -
Linking to External Site In Nav Bar
Hi, we are a celebrity site but also own a separate sports site with its own URL. We have a link to that site in our Nav bar. Are we being penalized by having that link? thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Uinterview0 -
Duplicate anchor text vs poor relevance in internal links
We're writing a number of blog posts, all based around a particular head-term (call it "women's widgets"). Each post will be centered around a different long-tail keyword (e.g. "women's brandA widgets", "women's brandB widgets", "women's type1 widgets", etc.). We want to link from the blog posts back to the main "women's widgets" category-level page on our site. Should we: a) Use the words "women's widgets" in each blog post and link that to the "women's widgets" page? This would be the most relevant, but it also seems like using the same anchor text on all of the posts, and linking to the main page, is not good since Google doesn't like seeing the same exact anchor text all the time, right? b) Link the long-tail keyword ("women's brandA widgets") to the main "women's widgets" page? That would solve the anchor text duplication issue, but then the anchor text doesn't seem relevant to the page being linked to (it might never mention "brandA" on that main page at all), and I think it would also hurt the blog post's chances of ranking for the long-tail keyword since we're basically saying that there's a more relevant page for that keyword somewhere else (i.e. you shouldn't link out from a page using the phrase you're trying to optimize that page for). c) Link a nearby word/phrase instead? For example, we could say "Trust Companyname.com for your women's widget needs", and link "Companyname.com" to the "women's widget" page. By proximity to the keyword phrase, that may help a bit, but again the relevancy of the anchor text to the page being linked to is fairly low. I'd hate to have a bunch of "click here", "read this" or "company name" anchor texts being used, just in the name of not overusing the head-term in the anchor text. Are we just missing something, or misunderstanding Google's preferences? What do you do when you don't want to overuse a keyword in anchor text, but you still want to link to a main category-level page using the head-term in order to tell Google that that is the most relevant, best page for that keyword? Is anchor text duplication more of a problem for external backlinks, and less of an issue for internal interlinking? Do you have a different suggestion, other than what I outlined above? Thanks for the help!
On-Page Optimization | | BandLeader
John0 -
Alt text / internal linking
Hi everyone A question about best practice when linking from pictures on our homepage - hirespace.com We have an option of using divs with background images (nicer in terms of design) but it means that we can't use anchor text or alt text to show Google what these internal links are about. The other option is to use images which do not allow us as much flexibility in terms of CSS but would allow us to use alt text. There is also an opinion that we should have separate text links at the bottom of the homepage to get the anchor page in. What is best practice in this situation - is alt text worth sacrificing some CSS flexibility for? How important is anchor/alt text for internal linking? Thanks guys.
On-Page Optimization | | HireSpace0 -
Is it bad to include google Maps in footer?
We have 5 locations and we were thinking about including a map for each location in the footer. These would be set-up as no-follow links. They could potentially enhance user experience but it also increases size of footer. Right now there are just basic links to pages (sitemap, terms, etc), contact info, social links, and contact form. If we did the maps it would also include link to the individual location pages. Not sure if we are doing too much in footer or need to just keep it basic. Thanks for the help!
On-Page Optimization | | Restore0 -
Best practice for footer in ecommerce - Shall I add Top Category links?
What would you recommend regarding links to "Top Products" and "Top Categories" in footer? Would you add them to give extra link juice to top categories? would you try to avoid category links in footer that are already in the header navigationor in the main content area to avoid linking twice from all pages? would you vary these top category links in footer according to main category
On-Page Optimization | | lcourse0 -
Navigation Links Causing Too Many Links Help?
Hello, I have read some SEOMOZ search results for this, but am still concerned that Google may see 4,500 Too Many Link warnings as a problem. This is caused primarily due to our header navigation, which is not intended to be keyword stuffing, but to provide all avenues for our breadth of content. site: crazymikesapps.com. Most answers seem to advise if there is no keyword stuffing at hand don't worry about it. Any help appreciated. thank you Mike
On-Page Optimization | | crazymikesapps0 -
How many outbound links is too many outbound links?
As a part of our SEO strategy, we have been focusing on writing several high quality articles with unique content. In these articles we regularly link to other websites when they are high quality, authoritative sites. Typically, the articles are 500 words or more and have 3-5 outbound links, but in some cases there are as many as 7 or 8 outbound links. Before we get too carried away with outbound links, I wanted to get some opinions on how many outbound links we should be trying to include and more information on how the outbound links work. Do they pass our website's authority on to the other website? Could our current linking strategy cause future SEO problems? Finally, do you have any suggestions for guidelines we should be using? Thank you for your help!
On-Page Optimization | | airnwater0