Footer backlinks

[Digital Lead]

Recently, i analysed a seo company, and found that his backlinks are mostly from sites which put the anchor text on its footer, is like this:
Copyright (C) 2012 Brand | Web Design by Seo Company

This company is reputable in doing seo for small to big companies. So this concludes that footer backlink is not one of the reason why u get penalized but whether google thinks it is legit not?

 

[Ettienne]

If it's relevant to the domain in some way and the placement is right, then it can be good and won't cause penalties. The problem comes when you have a site selling gardening services but have footer links linking to cats, printers and eyecare products. Just a stupid example

 

[german seo]

Depends on the keyword you are ranking for. MOZ had a story about a SEO company who got a manual penalty for getting 100 of exact match anchors form footer links. Basically all of their client sites. If it's partial match (still risky) and branded you will do fine.

 

[Digital Lead]

If it's relevant to the domain in some way and the placement is right, then it can be good and won't cause penalties. The problem comes when you have a site selling gardening services but have footer links linking to cats, printers and eyecare products. Just a stupid example

Hi, thank you for your reply, i have check its bl and almost all its non-niche relevant. This seo site is actually the one who designed the whole website to their customers, so they are asking customers to link back to their site with "Powered by Seo Company" which is the same tactic used by Wordpress. All the backlinks are not relevant. Why this BIG reputable seo company still able to rank without getting penalize?

Depends on the keyword you are ranking for. MOZ had a story about a SEO company who got a manual penalty for getting 100 of exact match anchors form footer links. Basically all of their client sites. If it's partial match (still risky) and branded you will do fine.

Well, as for the anchor text, i have seen him using the same anchor text over and over again but with 10 LSI of 6%-8% each and naked url 12% . So this consider is ok,right?

 

[sub001]

Footer links are not the strongest, but work. Obviously, you should try to look like you're not scamming Google. Here's an interesting case study that shows the power of footer links: http://www.viperchill.com/google-control/

 

[Nargil]

Footer links have been significantly devalued years ago due to sape and similar type networks. And the kind of link you found is pretty natural for web design companies. For example, check some premium/free theme in wordpress that has its own website. You will see shittons of links from every wordpress installation that has the theme. Some sites like these have thousands of footer backlinks and they are quite fine, even though it looks quite spammy.

 

[Sristy]

A lot depends upon the composition of his other links. If the ratio is good then these links can work its charm but only having these links are inviting trouble.

 

[german seo]

Well, as for the anchor text, i have seen him using the same anchor text over and over again but with 10 LSI of 6%-8% each and naked url 12% .

Yep, this seems pretty natural.

 

[Aty]

Why did you leave the link?

 

[validseo]

As an experiment I ranked a website to #2 in google for a high competition keyword using nothing but exact match footer links. Works great. I decided to leave the experiment up permanently as a "Canary in the Coal Mine" test. If Google ever devalues exact match link text OR footer links then I'll know about it and will share that info.

 

[Deleted member 657006]

You can use footer backlinks but only pointing to internal pages and must not be the same pages as the menu nav as this is called dup.

Footer links are fantastic when doing seo , can help you get internal links to out weigh competitor links .


Say your competition got 20 links on main page , all internal links with the help of the footer you can have 10 on menu and know 30 on the footer , know you have out weighed the comp ....

all nicely formatted in css look good and responsive.

 

[darulez]

As an experiment I ranked a website to #2 in google for a high competition keyword using nothing but exact match footer links. Works great. I decided to leave the experiment up permanently as a "Canary in the Coal Mine" test. If Google ever devalues exact match link text OR footer links then I'll know about it and will share that info.

yeah. it works.
but, even if (i have seen and "used" it too), I still try to keep away from it.
"next fred flinstone" update and you got a ton of issues.

else, I only use brand links for footers.

 

[validseo]

yeah. it works.
but, even if (i have seen and "used" it too), I still try to keep away from it.
"next fred flinstone" update and you got a ton of issues.

else, I only use brand links for footers.

The experiment has been running for over two years now... still waiting for the hammer to fall. But I agree... it is not risk-free.

 

[Digital Lead]

Request mod to delete this thread as it links to the site, i have forgotten to not giving external link. Thx