Back links from irrelevant websites

If you are talking about followed sitewide footer links on client sites, it is generally not considered to be a good idea. In the end, though, I think it comes down to whether Google thinks the link was editorially placed there by the site owner as well as what kind of anchor text it used. When in doubt, no-follow them.

https://blog.monitorbacklinks.com/seo/footer-backlinks/

https://www.mariehaynes.com/footer-links-and-penalties/

The footer links used to help web design companies, now it hurts them.

The problem is they aren't irrelevant websites, they're irrelevant to the niche you want to rank in - so they're irrelevant to you.

You're getting a ton of links, one from every page of every website you design, in lots of different industries. None of them are relevant to your niche and they're probably all from brand new sites, meaning none of them have any power behind them.

It's a tired link scheme, and Google's caught on.

I don't believe that irrelevant links have any negative effect on your site.

First, I have never seen an irrelevant link harming sites I worked on personally.

Second, consider big authority sites, such as amazon, having backlinks from every topic and niche imaginable.

Third, it is extremely difficult to distinguish between an unnaturally placed link from the natural one. Google would have to manually read the text and determine whether the anchor text from one site going to the irrelevant site is for the purpose of manipulating trust and authority flow.

To give you an example, let's say I have a site focused on my dog and his health. While most of the site is about the dog and everything about him, there is a small part of a post I wrote that mentions an air filter that I noticed my dog's allergies improve with and I link to it.

A perfectly natural inclusion of an anchor text that results in an irrelevant backlink.

There are tons of situations like this across the web and so it is impossible to distinguish between the links that are unnaturally planted in the text from those that are placed by writers themselves who try to provide more value to their readers.

I hope this helps. Good luck and enjoy the process.

So what should i do, add a no-follow attribute to all the footer inbound links Or leave them as they are ?

Assuming the paying client is ok with your footer link, I'd only have one link on the Home page because odds are it's going to have one of the largest supporting backlink profiles for the entire site.

...and point those backlinks at an internal page on your own site. That way you can turn the links off anytime you want by deleting the internal URL in case the shit hits the fan for whatever reason, manual review gone wrong, etc...

that's depends on the backlinks of website authority. If high authority, the irrelevant backlinks still effective.
A company called *DS, has put the backlinks to all of his clients' websites footer. The company keyword is ranking on Google 1st page.

Is that a good idea to nofollow the links? It will have less effect on SEO, but you still keep the other visitors know about your brand name.

If you look around, a lot of products and services ask for attribution links. Made with fontawesome, powered by emojiOne etc. They are put on different websites from a vast array of categories. Still it looks like they are helping the products than hurting them.

Asking for attribution is still a standard practice. I could only imagine that they are ignorant of SEO. But it doesn't looks like it.

You have to understand no link is harmful by itself. Only if most of your links are with the same anchors or very low quality you can be hurt (by Penguin or manual penalty). Proper care and proper precaution should be taken while doing backlinking tasks and proper procedure should be followed according to the algorithms and updates of Google.

Irrelevant links aren't harmful in and of themselves. They transfer questionable SERP value if they are not niche relevant, but only Google knows what is "niche relevant" for a design firm. So I don't think you should go around removing footer links from your clients - its a good promtional tool in and of itself and you could be gaining second-tier value if, for example, a design blog links to one of the websites you've designed as a good example of a well designed sites.

Just avoid overtly spammy links in bad domain "neighbourhoods" and you should be ok

I don't think so
it is a good idea
Why you do not work on SEO technique...
Instead of this

Main Street Hosting was at #1 for "SEO Service" for years because of their footer links. I can't find them on the SERPS now, not sure if they got rid of the links or not. Hard to tell how much business they got from that too.

If you are going to have them, I'd keep the do follow for sure.

I think this links are not harming your sites, but if you get related links, it will help to boost your keywords fast. Google loves related back links.

I think irrelevant web back link is not harmful. Because it help your site to rank fast. And it is countable for google rank.

Focus 100% of your energy on creating helpful content to get rocking links from rocking sites. Then you need not worry of negative effects, etc.

Hey ryanbiddulph , can you provide me links of some reference websites, to earn quality backlinks.

not good. I think this links are harming your sites

From Google:

"Additionally, creating links that weren't editorially placed or vouched for by the site's owner on a page, otherwise known as unnatural links, can be considered a violation of our guidelines. Here are a few common examples of unnatural links that may violate our guidelines:

Widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites"

Reference: https://support.google.com/webmaster...er/66356?hl=en

Clearly Google frowns on sitewide footer links. If you read the full article I referenced above, you'll find that Google also frowns on Guest Posting if you do it the wrong way:

"Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links"

The key thing to take away from that last statement is keyword rich in my opinion.

Google doesn't care if you embark on a large-scale guest posting campaign as long as you're adding value to the web with good content and following their webmaster guidelines.

But if all your guest post links have the same keywords that you're trying to rank for, it's a clear sign you're guest posting to manipulate rank.

In either case (guest posting or footer links), Google is primarily going to look at anchor text ratios to judge this sort of thing.

So, if your link profile has natural-looking anchor text diversity, you can get away with a lot. I'm not saying you should, but you can. Placing your URL in the footer as a link will look way more natural than having anchor text like "Best web design agency". But as others have pointed out, you should only do this on the homepage and NoFollow the links if you even bother to do this at all.

The question you need to ask yourself is how long until Google uses another method to detect manipulation and is it worth the risk?

Personally, I've seen footer links like the ones you are describing do very little if anything to rank. When they do help, it's a numbers game. I absolutely do not think they hurt your site at the moment unless they alter your anchor text ratio in a way that seems unnatural, but they also don't benefit you much if any.

The links that seem to do the most good are from niche relevant sites with real traffic. Use the Google Keyword Planner to see what Google thinks a site is all about. If their keywords match what you are trying to rank for, then see if you can earn an editorial link.

That is just a myth. So, if your site were to receive a backlink from Harvard, would you still argue that it is harmful just because your site has nothing to do with education?

you can ask a client to give your link as nofollow. You can also check out the quality of links by e.g.semrush or linkdetox tools, and in case of links mentioned as poor quality ones, you can disavow them

Adding a NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW attribute to those links will help you get rid of irrelevant links as those links may harm your SEO performance.
All the backlinks does not affect negatively, only those are harmful which violet Google guidelines. I will mention few below -
1. Site-wide and footer backlinks
2. Backlinks from foreign language websites
3. Hiding links in CSS and Javascript
4. Paid Links that pass PageRank
5. Widget Backlinks

Irrelevant backlinks are helpful in SEO, but not as helpful as relevant links!