Footer links on your site

dandee0014 · 07-20-2009, 12:52 PM

I was just looking at the source of a competitor who has a great SEO presence, and noticed that they make all of their footer links nofollow.

I've never considered this before. I guess it's logical to presume that so many dofollow links on your page could kill your link juice, but there are those who say it doesn't matter too.

I have about 30 links in my footer (all link to other sections of my site), and these links are present on hundreds of thousands of pages. Think I'd be better off making these nofollow?

Musa_Aykac · 07-20-2009, 02:38 PM

Matt Cutts indicated a few weeks back that page rank sculpting does not work. Personally you should always look at the amount of links a page has if its too many then cut it down. Common sense really.

What people were previously doing was say they had 10 links on a page if for example they nofollowed 5 they thought that power would pass through to the other pages. But it doesnt.

Also footer links are a quite outdated technique, especially if your linking to the same place twice as Google only count the first link. So if you have a link to a widgets page in the top navigation and then a link to the same place in the footer, theres no point really as your just creating unnecesary internal linking.

If you are using footer links to increase keyword density then it would be benificial to use content instead. :-)

dandee0014 · 07-20-2009, 03:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Musa_Aykac

Matt Cutts indicated a few weeks back that page rank sculpting does not work. Personally you should always look at the amount of links a page has if its too many then cut it down. Common sense really...

Musa,

The footer links happen to be there more for the convenience for our users than for anything else. Some pages have many links on them between the footer and other navigation, so I'll think about the necessity of them all when planning things out from here.

Thanks very much for the well thought out response.

07-20-2009, 12:52 PM	#1
dandee0014 IM Sponge War Room Member Join Date: Jun 2009 Posts: 140 Thanks: 25 Thanked 7 Times in 7 Posts	Footer links on your site - nofollow? dofollow? I was just looking at the source of a competitor who has a great SEO presence, and noticed that they make all of their footer links nofollow. I've never considered this before. I guess it's logical to presume that so many dofollow links on your page could kill your link juice, but there are those who say it doesn't matter too. I have about 30 links in my footer (all link to other sections of my site), and these links are present on hundreds of thousands of pages. Think I'd be better off making these nofollow?

07-20-2009, 02:38 PM	#2
Musa_Aykac Active Warrior War Room Member Join Date: Jul 2009 Location: UK Posts: 71 Thanks: 5 Thanked 85 Times in 7 Posts Social Networking	Re: Footer links on your site - nofollow? dofollow? Matt Cutts indicated a few weeks back that page rank sculpting does not work. Personally you should always look at the amount of links a page has if its too many then cut it down. Common sense really. What people were previously doing was say they had 10 links on a page if for example they nofollowed 5 they thought that power would pass through to the other pages. But it doesnt. Also footer links are a quite outdated technique, especially if your linking to the same place twice as Google only count the first link. So if you have a link to a widgets page in the top navigation and then a link to the same place in the footer, theres no point really as your just creating unnecesary internal linking. If you are using footer links to increase keyword density then it would be benificial to use content instead. :-)