Nofollow on Client Site
-
Hi,
On our client sites we have a link in the footer that says the site is maintained and developed by my company. That link takes you to a page that has outbound links to our site. Should these links be nofollow, since in a way they are almost like sponsored links? I feel like I read that somewhere but I can't remember where.
Any advice is appreciated!
Thanks!
-
You are best to set the link as no follow
-
Hi Donald,
Thanks for your reply. So if we linked ourselves from the client footer contact us page (the link would go to a content page about us with links to our site), that would likely also be considered spam as well?
-
Hi Ali,
It is considered bad practice to have followed links in a clients footer. Google considers this span since it will essentially be a link on every page of a clients site. Also many of these sites may not have anything to do with your company making them not as relevant to begin with.
I have read some articles in which tests were done trying to confirm that a site could not rank by doing this. However they found out that in the early game these links indeed helped a new site rank quickly. But they still highly advised against this form of link building because it was against googles link building policy.
Thanks,
Don Silvernail
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Really, what are the benefits of creating a Google Brand page for an e-commerce site?
We have a jewellery store client who already have a Google My Business page set up for its store front business. Should we also create a Google Brand page for its e-commerce site (which has a different business name to the jewellery store)? This client already has a pretty robust Facebook profile. Is it worth it maintaining a Brand page then - since it targets Google plus users?
Branding | | Gavo
And what are the chances of a Brand page appearing on search results when you're not a Nike or a Calvin Klein? Thanks heaps in anticipation of your response.0 -
Google Contacting Clients in an Adwords MCC?!
I am curious if this has happened to others and if so if you were able to resolve it. Today a client forwarded an email that went to a client account and we were in no way copied on it. This is a client that spends in the 6 figures with us and I was shocked to read (Any bold or italics I have added): Hi *****, My name is Jimmy Morrow and I am an Account Strategist at Google on our Agency Team. Your account was recently selected for free dedicated support this quarter and I will be your new point of contact at Google for all things AdWords. We can go over a few housekeeping things I noticed, broader strategy, and some betas that would be a good fit. Please let me know when you have time for a 20-30 minute phone call when we can go over the accounts and make a plan for working together this quarter. Thanks and just let me know a time that works best for you! Best, Jimmy To me, they have essentially gone around us and with the "housekeeping" and "beta" comments sought to make us look either incapable and/or uninformed. We are Google Partners, etc. and we have clients in our MCC for Adwords. I have never seen an occasion where Google blatantly tried to steal the client as it appears is happening here. This is a client who heretofore had NEVER used Adwords and they have been in business since before there was a Google or an Internet. We brought them to Adwords about 6 - 8 months ago!!! They are spending 6 figures on Adwords and I am ready to pull them out and spend the money elsewhere. We sent emails from our UK and our Houston office and no response from lil ole Jimmy. Our UK team has tried calling Google and nothing and then Chatting with them and we can get nothing. This is a client who has a lot of faith in our abilities based on many things we have done for them that worked and they are the kind of client that let's us know when issues arise. So, they are not going to switch and that is not the issue. The issue is Google acted as if they wanted to embrace agencies and if that is so, why then try to back door them? I hope to hear from others who are handling PPC with Google. Thanks a ton. Robert
Branding | | RobertFisher1 -
Country sites - TLD's or sub directories?
Dear All, We have several brands which operate a several languages and currently have a set up like this: www.[BRAND].com/ = English global www.[BRAND].com/de = German www.[BRAND].com/fr = French … Each subdirectory is a completely different site so I was wondering would it be better to use TLD’s for each country site in order to hold more equity in the search engine if we used: www.[BRAND].com/ = English global www.[BRAND].de = German www.[BRAND].fr = French Are country top level domains the way to go? If we wanted to change language within a country site should we use the following? www.[BRAND].be = Belgium English www.[BRAND].be/nl-NL/ = Belgium Dutch If you could let me know what to do I would be most grateful. Thanks guy's Ian Leggett UI Developer
Branding | | SThreeMarketing0 -
Redesigning a Site - What Optimizations are "Must Haves"?
I'm psyched - a client has just approved a complete redesign of their site! Feel like a have a little bag of gold in my hand, and want to spend it wisely. My question to you, fellow Mozzers, is what elements would you make sure to include a site to make it as optimized as possible? A few details about the site: 1. It is an informational site, designed to generate leads for a medical product. No products for sale, no e-commerce functionality needed. 2. The site has approximately 250 pages. Last site update was in 2009. 3. Videos are an important part of their marketing strategy. In addition to shortening their URL structure (some URLs have 6-7 folders, ugh), I plan to utilize schemas and incorporate mobile responsive design. What other areas would you prioritize for optimization? Thanks, Allie
Branding | | Allie_Williams0 -
Effects of a long-term holding page/503 http code whilst site is being rebranded?
We have a client who is adamant that during the rebranding of their company and website, a holding page is put in place from August 5<sup>th</sup> till go-live date on August 21<sup>st</sup>. They don’t look like budging on the matter, therefore we are looking to set up a 503 HTTP code on the holding page to tell Google the site is down for maintenance and redirect all pages back to the holding page. The general consensus is that implementing this for such a long period of time will see Google de-index all pages and the site will lose masses of traffic as a result for a substantial time afterwards. It would be great to get some insight on best practice for this situation, how Google will determine the situation and the consequences of such actions. If you have any case studies of similar situations or have firm knowledge of how this scenario would affect the site, I would be delighted to hear from you!
Branding | | AndrewAkesson0 -
Link local online newspaper ad to newspaper's spash page or my site?
We just started advertising on the web version of our local newspaper. They suggest our ads go to a "splash page" they created for us on their site. The page haslinks , images and text taken from each of our main categories,. Plus links and feeds from our twitter and facebook pages. And a google map. This page shows a page authority 1 with 0 links. Is there any reason to link our ad to a page like this rather than going direct to our website page? Thank you Handcrafter
Branding | | stephenfishman0 -
Does a +1 or Share appear in SERPs site-wide, or only for the page that is specifically shared?
Take the example Danny Sullivan posted: http://searchengineland.com/how-being-friends-on-google-leads-to-better-rankings-87376 In this case, Ford shared www.ford.com, and its friends and followers see that in the SERPs. Hoever, how does that compare with, say, sharing http://www.ford.com/cars/mustang/? Does the entire domain reap the benefit, or just that page? Would people see a "Ford shared this" beneath a search result pointing to ford.com (the home page), even if Ford had only shared this specific interior page? Or is it too soon to know for sure how this is all going to work?
Branding | | kpclaypool0