Think twice about SEO when setting your Footer Links

The frequent algorithm updates by Google such as Panda, Penguin and “Exact Match Domain” have managed to control many tricks of SEO. The most recent one have proven loss of results to websites having plenty of backlinks composed with same anchor text – quite often, credits in the footer links. This has caused losses of SERPs and has disturbed many webmasters to do better in managing their sites.

Now, Google has understood some points and think that they are big mistakes of SEO consultants in website ranking. The age old links in the footer, or too many links that point to their site are now nothing but irrelevant. Google sees it as a mere effort to hunt ranking for a specific pivotal word. For a genuine and quality backlinks, Google has given us some guidelines to follow.

The Problems of the traditional Footer Links:

We’ve identified three main issues in traditional footer links that Google advises to stay away from. Following these guides when building your footer links can make your relevancy high in the eyes of search engines. Thus, gaining good page ranks, yielding better and higher traffic.

Irrelevant Linking

In this zero relevancy point, you can use a trick to make a relationship between the two sites, your own site and the linking site of your client. One must develop a website design portfolio pages which optimize the web page using pivotal phrases and client’s key-phrases can fill the relevancy gap for search engines.

For example, say you’ve just built a church website for your client.

Instead of saying this:

a better solution might be

The above footer link now shows a valid relevancy. Google will most likely honor this link that the latter. In addition, readers of your link are more likely to click it – than one that is completely off topic to what they’re viewing.

Don’t just link to your homepage

This is pretty much a given. Diversify your landing pages. In short, do not just add a link to your homepage, but to many of your pages. A most likely candidate is your portfolio page or contact page. Remember, a footer link on just one website may bring in too many links from same domain – since it will show on every single page of your their site. This is something unacceptable by search engines as it will show as “unnatural” in SEO terms.

True that your most important page may be home, but to search engines – its the one that people “link to” the most. So diversify your footer links.

Too Many Exact Anchor Text Links

This may be similar to our first bullet point – but then again, let’s expand of it some more. Google is saying that the common anchor text content for a footer link should be more diverse (there goes that word again). I mean, how often do you see “Web design by …“.

Be creative and do something like:

For example

Conclusion

Let’s recap what have we’ve learned. SEO commoners are also just learning these new tricks – so don’t feel so bad. Diversify your footer links. This will create relevancy between your client site and your own. Do not use too general terms for your text links. Be creative – this will not only look good to search engines but to viewers as well. Last of all, hyperlink to many pages of your site – not just the home page.

By putting these tips for better footer links into practice, the results for better SEO will increase. I guarantee it.