Affect in SERPs when moving footer links off the homepage
-
I have several pages that rank highly in the SERPs and these pages are linked directly to my homepage in the footer. I want to clean up my footer because I have too many site wide links but don't want to hurt the SERP rankings during the transition. Will removing these page links from the footer impact SERP rankings?
-
Thank you Moosa and Doug - your answers were very thoughtful and helpful!
Do you believe that reducing the # of footer links will have a positive impact by providing additional link juice to the important pages that I keep?
-
What links do you need in your footer?
The importance of these pages isn't just their ranking position, but also the traffic that they are getting, and the conversion rate (how qualified are the visitors?)
I would audit your content and find out what pages really matter to you and then, if you really need to, remove the links to the pages that aren't of any commercial value and question if you actually need those pages at all.
Can you consolidate content onto one page (for example combining any lega/privacy policy/terms of service content onto one page)
Are any of the pages in your footer also linked in your main navigation? If so then you can probably remove them from the footer without affecting too much. I would add a word of caution through - if you've got lengthy content and visitors (the real human beings) are using the footer to find their way about then it's going to affect usability.
Removing links from a page passing lots of link equity then you are going to weaken the target page - if you've got loads of links on your home page and you prune some of the zero value pages you may find that you're passing more equity to your important pages.
As Moosa suggests, if you want to do some housekeeping, reduce the risk by making small changes and testing.
-
If the links in the footer of the website are of the same websites (internal pages) then removing them from the footer (as per my personal experience) will cause ranking fluctuation ...I am not sure why you are removing it but if it is because you want to stay away from the penalty caused by site wide links then IMPO with internal pages this won’t be a problem...
If you really want to remove the link from the footer the best idea is to remove the links one by one and see the impact of it on SERP rankings overall...
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
-
Tens of duplicate homepages indexed and blocked later: How to remove from Google cache?
Hi community, Due to some WP plugin issue, many homepages indexed in Google with anonymous URLs. We blocked them later. Still they are in SERP. I wonder whether these are causing some trouble to our website, especially as our exact homepages indexed. How to remove these pages from Google cache? Is that the right approach? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Too many "nofollow" outgoing links are Okay?
Hi all, Our forum have so many discussions and topics where our users leave their websites and oter URLs which will be marked "nofollow" by default. Beside spammy websites, is that Okay to have so many "nofollow" outgoing links? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Should I move my forum to a subdomain?
My forum causes a lot of 403, 404, soft 404 and 522 errors. I worry about this dragging down the value of my domain and wonder if I should move it to a sub directory. forum.domain.com. I was forced to do this with a very similar site and seems to have not suffered any google penalty (I implemented a 301 redirect to each page to its corresponding page on the subdomain.
Algorithm Updates | | 321Chat0 -
Getting squeezed out of SERP by local results
Hi All, I wanted to get some opinions on a phenomenon that I know others are dealing with... We have a client who is an online-only business (though they do have an office/warehouse location). The on-page is great, and the site has good domain authority for its niche. The issue is that Google is localizing most of their search terms - And our client is getting squeezed down and out in the SERPs by the local listings. How is everyone dealing with this issue? It seems like we'll never get the site to out-rank the local listings in a given geo. Thanks, Lee
Algorithm Updates | | vectormedia0 -
Will Ranking Reports be Affected with the new Google Changes?
For example: Raven stopped use of scraped Google, SEMRush data on Jan. 2 Raven stopped offering unauthorized Google SERP rankings and keyword data (a.k.a. scraped Google data) on Jan. 2, 2013. The change included the retirement of the SERP Tracker and the elimination of SEMRush data from the Raven platform. Raven has released new SEO performance reports that make it easy to show clients the impact of campaigns to improve organic traffic. Raven will continue to upgrade reports through the year. We thank the many customers who continue their business with Raven. More details about the SEO performance reports and other recent releases are available Is SEOMoz protected in some way? Or will you have to give up rankings reports too?
Algorithm Updates | | MSWD0 -
Meta description and its influence on the SERPS
Hi Hi, on the On-Page Ranking Card I read: "The meta description, while it does not influence rankings in the results, can still be valuable to employ to improve the click-through-rate of searchers from the results page and to provide context to those visitors about the page's topic/focus." And Google confirms that it doesn't influence the results. On the infografic on this page (text is in german), the say, it has a little relevance for the serps and that is what I experience, too. http://t3n.de/news/diese-faktoren-beeinflussen-365580/ What is you experience with meta description and serps? André
Algorithm Updates | | waynestock0 -
Why is my client's website, ranking higher for serps on bing and yahoo for competitive keywords
My client is in the competitive Private jet charter space. Why is my client's website, ranking higher for serps on bing and yahoo for competitive keywords phrases? like Private jet charter as an example. http://www.jetcharter.com/
Algorithm Updates | | AndrewSEO0 -
No-follow tags on links in the footer...do it or don't do it?
With some of the great reports SEOMoz has provided I've been able to start to take the correct steps towards fixing crawl issues, on-page issues, etc. One of my websites allows a customer to drill down to their specific state and then their city to apply for an auto loan. The SEOMoz reports told me I had too many links on these pages specifically. One of my ways to remedy this would be to add "no-follow" tags on the links in the footer as well as the links to the cities. Am I steering myself in the right/wrong direction? Should I be approaching this problem from a different perspective? Any help is greatly appreciated!
Algorithm Updates | | fergseo0