Site after site that I visit lately has been showing a tendency for using footer links to run their internal SEO link structure and anchor text optimization. While this practice in years past held value, today I rarely ever recommend it (and yes, SEOmoz itself will be moving away from using our footer for category links soon). Here's why:
- Footer links may be devalued by search engines automatically
Check out the evidence - Yahoo! says they may devalue footer links, Bill Slawski uncovers patents suggesting the same and anecdotal evidence suggests Google might do this (or go further) as well. Needless to say, if you want to make sure your links are passing maximum value, it's wise to avoid the footer (particularly the footer class itself). - Footer links are often not the first link on the page to a URL
Since we know that the first link on a page is the one whose anchor text counts and footer links, while anchor text optimized, are often a second link to an already-linked-to target, they are likely not to have the desired impact. - Footer links get very low CTR
Naturally, since they're some of the least visible links on a webpage, they receive very little traffic. Thus, if algorithms like BrowseRank or other traffic metrics start to play a role in search rankings, footers are unlikely to have a positive impact. - Footer links often take a page beyond a healthy link total
Many pages that already have 80-100 links on the page are going to lose out when they add a footer with another 30-50 links embedded. The link juice passed per link will go down and the value of each individual link is lowered. - Footer links can be a time suck
The time you spend crafting the perfect link structure in the footers could be put towards more optimal link structures throughout the site's navigation and cross-linking from content, serving both users and engines better.
That's not to say I don't suggest doing a good job with your footers. Many sites, large and small, will continue to use the footer as a resource for link placement and, just as with all other SEO tactics that fade, they do carry some residual value. Let's walk through a few examples of both good and bad to get a sense for what works:
Thumbs Up: Shopper.Cnet.com
I like the organization, the clear layout, the visibility and the fact that they've distinguished (through straight HTML links vs. drop downs) which links deserve to pass link juice and ranking value. I'm also impressed that I actually see a "Paris Hilton" link in the footer yet am not completely unaccepting of the idea that it could be there entirely naturally, simply as a result of what's popular on CBS.
Thumbs Down: Hawaii-Aloha.com
These are my least favorite kinds of footers. The links are just squashed together, the focus is obviously on anchor text, not relevance, the links are hard to see and read and there's little thought given to users. The links don't even look necessarily clickable until you hover.
Thumbs Up: VIPRealtyInfo.com
When I searched for "Dallas Condos", I was sure I'd find some examples for thumbs down, which is why I was so thrilled to find VIPRealtyInfo, a clearly competitive site in a tough SEO market doing a lot of things right. Yeah, there's some reasonable optimization in the anchor text, but it's definitely not overboard and the links are useful to people and search engines. The visual layout and design quality gives it an extra boost, too - something that can't be overstated in importance when it comes to potential manual reviews by the engines.
Thumbs Down: ABoardCertifiedPlasticSurgeonResource.com
The site's done a great job with design - it's really quite an attractive layout and color scheme. The links in the "most popular regions" aren't that bad; it's really the number of them that makes me worried. If they'd stuck to one column, I think they'd easily pass a manual review and pass good link juice (rather than spreading it out with so many links in addition to everything else on the page). The part that really sent me over the edge though was the two sentences in the green box, laden with links I didn't even realize were there until I hovered. Technically, there's nothing violating the search guidelines, but I wouldn't put it past the engines to come up with smart ways to devalue links like these, particularly when their focus is so clearly on anchor text, not user value.
Thumbs Up: Food.Yahoo.com
Again - great organization, good crosslinking (remaining relevant, then branching out to other network properties) and solid design. Even the most aggressive of the links on the right hand side appear natural and valuable to users, making it hard for an engine to argue they shouldn't pass full value.
Thumbs Sideways: DeviantArt.com
It's huge - seriously big. And while it's valuable for users and even contains some interesting content, it's not really accomplishing the job of a footer - it's more like a giant permanent content block on the site. The arrow that lets you close it is a good feature, and the design is solid, too. However, the link value really isn't there and the potential for big blocks of duplicate content across the site makes me a bit nervous, too.
So what can we take away from these analyses? A few general footer-for-SEO rules of thumb:
- Don't overstuff keywords in anchor text
- Make the links relevant and useful
- Organize links intelligently - don't just throw them into a big list
- Cross-linking is OK, just do it naturally (and in a way that a manual review could believe it's not solely for SEO purposes)
- Be smart about nofollows - nearly every footer on the web has a few links that don't need to be followed, so think about whether your terms of service and legal pages really require the link juice you're sending
- Make your footers look good and function well for users to avoid being labeled "manipulative" during a quality rater's review
What's your take on footers for SEO, and how do you use them or avoid them?
p.s. If you're thinking about footers from a layout and design perspective, check out Matt's older (but still good) post on 19 Gorgeous Website Footers.
p.p.s. Happy Thanksgiving! This year, I'm thankful for (among many other things) Danny's awesome post calling out spam and manipulation in the engines (and Google's responses, too).
Excellent post Rand - we've been trying to move our clients away from relying on footer links for several months now.
Anecdotally - one of our clients who had footer links of the bad kind (small text, about 40 links, the same on every page) was actually rejected entry into Yahoo Search Submit because of the footer links. Yahoo told them to remove the footer before they were accepted. I found this quite amazin on several levels but it certianly highlights the point that the search engines don't like these footer links.
ive also had a client recently rejected from Yahoo, who had a fairly seo heavy footer.... is there any yahoo guidelines that covers what they will let into their system?
We have definitely seen Yahoo be particularly aggressive about devaluing footer links and it's pretty clear why it would be something any engine would like to do for the bad examples you highlight. I actually really like nice footers from a design / user perspective, so I hope this encourages them to be done well rather than ditched entirely.
Interesting post. But I'm still of the opinion that footers and/or sidebars are a good point to place links to sites that you want to have crawled rapidly (often topical links) but aren't that relevant to the current page. Of course I'm talking about internal links and no "buy cheap viagra" external links :-)
Spot on! I've actually been reading into footer links for the past few days. The thing is that on websites I've been monitoring, Google appears not to punish for (pretty extensive) footer linking.
Based on points 1 through 5, would it be worth pro-actively removing/no-following these links or use a 'no harm, no foul' policy and leave them in place?
Has this changed at all? Does Google still not penalize you for having too many optimized links in your footer for SEO purposes?
A reputable SEO firm just mentioned that this is one of the tactics they use along with changing the footer based on the page category.
One thing I would add is that a footer can be especially helpful regarding functionality / user-access. There are alot of very long pages out there, with a great deal of content, and it can be advantageous to have something at the end as your next port of call...
Just a thought,
Ben
One thing to note is that google values pages and directories uniquely:
site.com/store != site.com/store/
Watch your trailing slashes and stay consistent. Inconsistent trailing slashes can devestate an otherwise effective intra-site link strategy.
End of day, it doesn't really hurt in utilizing footer links as long as it is useful for the user and enhances the overall user experience. Letting the user find what they were looking for and not having links just for the propose of internal seo link structure, should be the key.
If there is a risk that footer links are going to be devalued, should there be just as few links as possible, more like Google's page which only has four rather than some of the "thumbs up" examples which still have 10s of links?
i don't think google devalue footer links !.google makes lot's of changed this days. most of the changes are base on google lsi update.read more about it https://www.cheapdomainnamesdot.com/domain-blog/goodbye-google-algorithm-hello-google-new-lsi-algorithm.htm & https://www.cheapdomainnamesdot.com/domain-blog/google-serp-update-october-2008.htm
This couldn't have come at a better time. We were just asked by a client to design a site with a footer that focuses on affiliate link exchanges. This is great ammunition...
Thanks Rand, Great Tips on Footer Link Optimization.
I noticed in so many sites there are lots of links with targeted keyword’s anchor text in the footer.
Proper Footer Link Optimization can be useful to Search Engines and Users also.
I have seen this debate for a while. And I have noticed that I can tweak rankings that are slipping with a well placed anchor texted link in the footer. But that was on Wordpress, and Google is in love with Wordpress so who knows.
For a client I did notice that an address, phone number including toll free number and a long copyright (1998-2009) did increase phone calls so a footer can be used for more than SEO, linking structure, and usability. It can be your last word on the topic and your call to action.
Is it still useful to have a link back to your home page from the footer of every page with your desired anchor text?
I'd say not really, especially since it's likely that you've already linked to the home page higher up in the code with non-optimized anchor text (making it not count).
You know, only today I was looking at https://hotjobs.yahoo.com/ and thinking how spammy its footer looked.
:-/
Great food for thought Rand. I'm pleased you think there is still room for a 'good' footer with user value.
But *wow * - that DeviantArt one confused me; didn't realise it was all footer
Anecdotally, I've seen sites where a high proportion of links from external sites are in footers, and their weight with Google has dropped - people always said that Google had to get fed up with all those sponsored Wordpress themes eventually.
Great post! I've recently read quite a few articles on how SEO Footer is not that appropriate anymore.
Posted by randfish to Technical SEO Issues seomoz still have footer link now it 2011 and your article puslised in 2008 "today I rarely ever recommend it (and yes, SEOmoz itself will be moving away from using our footer for category links soon). "
why you misguide seo people by writing this type of article ....it not good
Good post !
Seo footer links are good upto some extent and it may harm you if 100links rule in not followed in the page.
I had seen this thing in
https://www.quickheed.com/seo/seo-footer-optimization.html
Your evidence seems to piont out that you are correct.
However how does this work with navigational links within the footer?
If the search engines devalue a link because it is in the footer would this not in theory devalue your internal pages due to their links being in the footer?
My website - https://www.showersnbaths.co.uk has the main navigation situated within the footer. So in theory would this be very bad?
Really Thanks a lot. ! my website is www.hiccupsolutions.com/ we deal in web design process and data conversion work with seo.
Hello Rand,
We only put links to our other important pages on the footer links that are not on the menu. I hope this will be okay.
Thanks,
Tony
Hi, is there any value in putting keywords into the footer?
Footer is definitely helpful for SEO doing.
thanks for your great article
but as you mentioned some popular websites still use footer links, and have a high PR
Which header class would you use? Are "mostly liked products" / "Things To Do" in the footer as important as recommended in the main content frame (h2)? Or are they h3 like sidebar logos and text information?
Great post Rand. We have been getting warnings about excessive links so with our new site redesign we are going to simply our footer based on this article. Thx!
Hi,
Is there any limit for footer links?
Hi Rand,
You mentioned 3 years ago you will be moving away from using product categories, however today you are still using it for product categories e.t.c
Is this because these links are not on the website navigation?
Can you say that the total number of unique internal links for optimisation should be lower vs. the total no. of pages per category?
Regards,
Vahe
my home page https://www.spanishhotproperties.com/ probably breaks every rule of link juice and footer links going but wer are number 1 on google for two of our keywords and number 3 for two more and between 8 and 15 for all our 6 keywords on Google so maybe were achieving it inspite of our home page layout rather than because of it. Obviously when your already ranked high you dont want to do anything to upset the applecart so to speak
I want to show my all footer link of my website in google search when i search for my website
I often go looking for stuff in the footers on sites as the stuff at the top of the page is to 'catch me' or misdirect me IMO ! I started to use nofollow for any internal links like privacy statement , contact us etc I dont even need those to be indexed by google certainly dont need the internal link to follow. So am wondering if the thousands of links this creates has been hurting me. I have some 'friends' sites in there that are other sites of mine and wonder if I should pull them out of there or no follow them.What is Seomoz opinion on having footer links to external sites say a site has in excess of 10k pages, will those sites get penalized ? If yes perhaps I could link to me competition (to proove the issue to readers - im not going to do that :))
i think there is value in important pages being listed in the footer, they have always been there and users will continue to look for them.
If you are unsure about if they are providing your client with real value, i suggest tagging them so you can track them in your analytics software or the best solution to show your client which ones work and dont work, undertake heat map tracking of the page/footer...
too many links drop their impact, and overuse of the same links can flag you with google's quality team and they might manually process your website, if you grow from 10 visitors to 10,000 visitors a day for a highly competitive term in a month...
so i still see value in using footer links
does the overal PR of a page distribute equally throughout the footer links as through links in the rest of the page? i thought that the fact that footers happen to be at the bottom of the page made them less prone to acquire link juice? i think i support the idea that footer areas should be deprived of PR juice if not completely, partially.
I dont necessarily agree.
One may have a website that is unique in design and the footer has been incorporated as the actual important area of navigation so there are always exceptions to rules be it for clever reasons or inexperienced designers but who have great content. (not uncommon scenario)
Its spam that is really what we want targeting not an element in itself.
(having said that I did do some testing (inverted commas) a while ago that involved changing all my footer tags to a new name, figuring that the first and easiest way of search engines determining this was a footer was because it was actually called 'footer' right? so they would be the first in the queue for selective devalueing so to speak. I dont stuff that area but it is the 'often expected' area for things like sitemaps and I like them to keep some importance.)
What I find interesting about this is that it denotes an intersection between SEO-ness and usability. What if the footer is just a good way to organize interface items? Do you have to compromise the user experience because Yahoo doesn't like them any more?
Does this mean at some highly-evolved point in the future, all web sites will look the same to match the Google/Yahoo standard?
Footer have value for the user. It not used as often as other navigation type but it can help give access to quicklink in very specific but critical moment of the user decision process. For exemple when you are looking for the price of delivery when you want to buy a product. That link as to be found quickly.
i made a article about tips to improvewebsite footer, its in french but if it helps someone
https://www.adviso.ca/blog/2008/02/18/13-strategies-et-bonnes-pratiques-pour-un-pied-de-page-ergonomique/
i agree with Ben Mckay, Rand what about the footer links on this blog. why do you have them? or they for usability or for SEO (ANCHOR TEXT)
Right at the top of the post, I mentioned that our footers are something we're going to be changing soon :)
sorry i miss that point...so basically you did that for SEO not for usability in first place?
I'd say that with the redesign, it didn't receive the attention to detail it deserved (our focus was heavily on Linkscape at the time), but yeah - probably more focus on usability (or layout) than SEO.
Great post. I've be investigating how useful adding a footer to my sites would be. This has been a great help.
Thanks for this post Rand.
I do however have some questions. How does a search engine determine what a footer link is? Is it simply because its at the bottom of the page in terms of code? The reason why I ask is because the footer link code can be added into the mid section of code with CSS.
Im not trying to sound "clever", just trying to understand search engines better. I agree fully that footer link abuse for extra anchor text value is not good.
However, what if I didn't want my link to my homepage to be "Home" but rather my keyword. So I no-follow the 1st "Home" link and add a "Keyword Anchor Text" link to the homepage in my footer along with the basic terms and conditions and copywrite information links?
Would that be regarded as a abused footer for anchor text value or manipulating the anchor text links so that spiders give you the value of the anchor text?
If my above method sounds good to go then could it be that if search engines find a 2nd bacth of naviagtional links that already exists previously on that page, then it triggers footer link abuse for anchor text value?
I think the engines probably use a lot of different heuristics including CSS class analysis but also location in code and commonalities across pages on a domain, etc.
As far as using nofollow on the first link, I'd test that first - not sure if it's been proven as an effective way to pass the anchor text you want to the home page.
Rand, have you had the opportunity to test nofollowing of the 1st link in order to pass the anchor text of a 2nd link?
Great post.
I must say that the footers I design are much different from years ago.
I organise them much better, so the links are useful to the user, not just search engines.
So its like a fall back plan, if people are confused by any graphical link etc, they can always trust the well organised footer.
good post rand
Thanks for good info,
i will change footer link in my blog...
good luck
I am currently redesigning footers for most of my clients right now. I am utilising a similar style and thought process as the examples shown by Rand above.
However, the fundamental difference between mine and many of those seen recently, is that I am creating the footers conceptually by on-page relevancy.Therefore, the blog area of a site uses dynamic footer links pointing to the latest posts, most popular categories etc. Whereas, a destination page will link to top-level holiday areas, properties linking to property type etc etc. Instead of having one footer across a whole site, a number will be implimented. I am hoping this will raise the level of relevancy and in turn increase usability for the visitor.
Most of the links in the footer can be nonfollow.we have to figure them out and stop passing link juice to them.
I think footer links are good to put on clients site, because they can provide you with new clients. However, I do nofollow my links since the risk of getting devaluated is there and the PR I would have goten from a footer link wouldn't weight up to the risk.
Great Post. Timely as well.
Thanks for the great examples on what works and why. Gave me some great ideas on how to organize the footer links as I am working on some real estate sites right now.
What do you think about corporate networks in the footer?
Somithing like:
"This site ist a part of the bigcompany.com. Other Projects are site1.bigcompany.com and anothersite.com."
Is that a good idea or would you rather put those links on one single page, like the imprint or about page?
(In Germany you have to have a link to your imprint on every single page of your website, so its common to have a footer with a lot of legal stuff, how to book ads on this site, Copyright Information and so on.)
Torben - yeah, I think that's fine. Check out how www.wired.com does it with the Conde Nast network. If you have to link to a lot of legal stuff, do consider using nofollow so you're not wasting link juice that could flow to more important pages.
Now those were great examples. As a real estate professional, I really enjoyed the VIP Realty example. Excellent list of the top 5 reasons about the footer non-benefits. Thanks Rand.
Thank! Very useful article, it gave a good idea how footer should be done.