Does CSS position effect the value of a link?
-
For example, take a look at http://www.dueds.com and scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. See the link in the bottom left? Does the fact that it is pushed all the way down to the bottom make the link worth less than if it was directly under the social media buttons?
-
Links in footer is probably the worst place to put them. Links in sidebar are also of less value. Links are best in the content of a page.
There is a body of evidence that for links based in the content portion of a page, the higher the link the more value it has. Such that, if the content is 3 paragraphs, P1 is better than P2 and P2 is better than P3.
I know there is a good evaluation on this I read about 5 - 6 months ago and if I can find in under 5 minutes, I will edit in the url.
-
Here's a piece of authentic information if you like videos and Matt Cutts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0fgh5RIHdE. Just as miss M. -J said, links in footer do carry less value.
-
What I do believe I know about link position is that the first link on a page has more value than the second, etc. The principle upon which Google's "link popularity / PageRank" algo was based on the 'random surfer model. So a link that is more likely to be clicked is more valuable. This is not to say that Google's PR algo has not evolved, but I am sure this principle is still in significant play.
I think most professional SEOs would also agree that footer links have less value than other links - though I am less certain of that than my first point.
I think Matt Cutts would say, try to think like the user. Is your visitor less likely to find and click on the link than if it were near the social media buttons? If so, it is likely to get less traffic.
Not all links can be the first link, but I would be sure to have any important link be "above the fold" and barring that, with a feature that would be likely to attract the eye of the user.
Hope that helps.
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
-
Too Many Links?
Search Term is Indianapolis Wedding Photographers. Site is http://www.tallandsmallphotography.com/ Their metrics are through the roof compared to everyone else's. They've dropped from 27 in May to 40 Now. 'A' Grade on-site optimization. Either there's too many links, or there's some bad links involved... I don't know which it is...
Technical SEO | | WilliamBay0 -
Pages not being cached have a negative effect?
Hi all! I look after a website where it's been discovered a section of the website has the noarchive robots meta tag active on it causing it to not get cached but has been indexed. Out of curiosity has anyone seen any negative effects from Google for having pages that aren't cached? It's not the strongest section on the website so makes it tricky to judge myself but interested if anyone had any thoughts on the matter. Cheers,
Technical SEO | | thisisOllie0 -
404's in WMT are old pages and referrer links no longer linking to them.
Within the last 6 days, Google Webmaster Tools has shown a jump in 404's - around 7000. The 404 pages are from our old browse from an old platform, we no longer use them or link to them. I don't know how Google is finding these pages, when I check the referrer links, they are either 404's themselves or the page exists but the link to the 404 in question is not on the page or in the source code. The sitemap is also often referenced as a referrer but these links are definitely not in our sitemap and haven't been for some time. So it looks to me like the referrer data is outdated. Is that possible? But somehow these pages are still being found, any ideas on how I can diagnose the problem and find out how google is finding them?
Technical SEO | | rock220 -
Press release not giving me my link juice
The other day we released a press release, see it here http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120717006087/en/Rapid7-Metasploit-Pro-Increases-Vulnerability-Management-Efficiency. I asked them to include two links (seen in the first paragraph) with targeted anchor text (vulnerability management and penetration testing). The press release was published and when I check the open site explorer to see if I got any link juice from the press release, I am not seeing the link...ugh I noticed that they are using some sort of tracking code that seems to be redirecting the link, is this the problem? I talked to our sales rep at businesswire and he told me that they could take the code off if that is what needs to be done. Do you have any insight into this or have you ever ran into this problem?
Technical SEO | | PatBausemer0 -
Unwanted spam pharmacy links
Somebody has been building spam pharmacy links to one of our client sites. I presume they hacked the site and were trying to get their injected pages to rank for pharmacy keywords. The hack appears to be gone now, but we will check more code to be sure. However, we're still left with a bunch of really spammy links, with pharmacy related anchor texts. Anyone had any experience dealing with this? Did the links hurt your rankings? How did you get rid of or mitigate them?
Technical SEO | | AdamThompson0 -
Redirect not picking up any link juice
Hi, We recently had a domain name change, as we had an established site we had all pages redirected to the new domain. This was over a month ago but despite the redirect SEOmoz doesn't recognise any links to and from the site. Is this due to simply time duration and SEOmoz can't pick up on any redirected info, or could there be a problem with the redirect? Thanks, Adam
Technical SEO | | adamgthorndike0 -
Linking from and to pages
My website, www.kamperen-bij-de-boer.com, tells people what campingssites can be found in The Netherlands for recreational purposes. In order for a campingsite to be mentioned on our website we ask them to place a link to our website (either using a text link or image link) and then we make a page for that campsite on our website with in the end a link to ther website, e.g. http://www.kamperen-bij-de-boer.com/Minicamping-In-t-Oldambt.html -> they in return link back to us. Since this comes natural will this or won't this be penalized by Google and so on for linkfarming. At this moment we have about 600 camping sites on our website alone linking to us (not all of them) and we are linking to them. Since this can be explained as link trading which is not as good for your ranking as one-way-linking what should be wise? Should i include a nofollow? I already have many links from other sites linking to mine without having to link back, is there anything else i can do with linking to ensure better ranking?
Technical SEO | | JarnoNijzing0 -
Is this seen as a Link Exchange
If i give a self serve banner ad to someone on my blog or a image with a link and they give me a text link ad is that in googles eyes a link exchange or a one way link.
Technical SEO | | DavidKonigsberg0