Interlinking three closely related sites - footer links without nofollow

Is it worth it?

[hugh]

What are the pros and cons of adding a common footer with links and no rel=nofollow to related sites?

[bwnbwn]

none with a nofollow

what is the purpose of the links in the footer just traffic?

[glengara]

If it was home page only fair enough, if it was sitewide......

[freelistfool]

You might get one or two hits to the other sites with a link buried in the footer.

The disadvantage is that you've cluttered up your site for next to no benefit.

[hugh]

The title was renamed incorrectly. I was asking about a common footer without rel=nofollow...

< Moderator note:
My apology for confusing this thread with
my poor edit to the title - I changed it now. >

[edited by: tedster at 8:03 pm (utc) on Sep. 18, 2007]

[soapystar]

im surprised people still say you lose all advantages with nofollow. Where do you get this from? What tests have you done? Does pr flow stop just to the linked page or is redistributed among other links on the page? is there any connection with anchor text and passed relevance even if the actual link is not followed? Im really interested to know since i dont have access to the same information you guys clearly have.

[RandomDot]

Well, if you add the no-follow attribute, it's likely that it would not affect the serps, but it could be a good way to sell links for branding larger corporations within your demographics or just draw some attention to other websites you've made or whatver - and the branding part could be a lucrative business if you have the right audience and the right company, and even without the risk of getting a sitewide penalty for trying to manipulate with the serps.

So,

Pro's: Branding Effect. Revenue Model. Risk Asserted Linking.
Con's: Doesn't help with ranking issues. SEO is out the window.

Sincerely, and have fun,

[soapystar]

well i totally disagree with you. I was just wondering if people who keep posting that this tag means everything is ignored actually have some substantive evidence for that or are just repeating stuff they read from others who are also making a best guess.

[bwnbwn]

soapystar,
It would be helpful if you would give us some insight as to your findings as well.

A no follow is just that a link that tells the bot this link is here for traffic purposes only. It is not an endorsement of the website but

1- I am making money from the link
2- I want to get this site exposed to my customers without me losing any PR from the link
3- It is another site I own and want to get exposure for the link.
4- I am a ruthless (my opinion) webmaster that is adding nofolow's to my links and asking for a live link in return to boost my website without helping the site I am asking for a trade from.

Can I prove it really doen't help in the serps no, can you disaprove it I doubt it so we have opinions, but from articles of other Webmasters, Googlers, and the thought behind the nofollow I feel there is no value to the rankings but there is value from the traffic, and the web is all about traffic.

[soapystar]

well simply off the top of your head, and before hearing what i might have to say, you are prepared to say i cant prove it the other way (you doubt it being your actual words). So no point in me trying to then ;)

I was just seeing if anyone actually had hard facts to backup the information they post and others may take and post elsewhere. As continues to happen.

[jimbeetle]

well i totally disagree with you. I was just wondering if people who keep posting that this tag means everything is ignored actually have some substantive evidence for that or are just repeating stuff they read from others who are also making a best guess.

"nofollow'ed links are dropped out of our link graph; we don't even use such links for discovery" in this thread [webmasterworld.com] is as close as anybody can get. Substantive? I guess as much as anything in this business is.

[soapystar]

Jim, i dont read that as you do.

[jimbeetle]

Yeah, though to some Matt's words are pretty unambiguous, there's plenty of discussion in that thread that shows he can be read many ways. As ever, we each interpret stuff and work with it as we think best. And it seems that sometimes even very contrary approaches can be successful. Go figure ;-)

[tedster]

Since I was the person who mangled the title and muddied the waters of this thread, I should offer some of my experience with footer interlinking WITHOUT the nofollow attribute.

When I've launched sites using footer links to related sites, there was no negative ranking effect or evidence of a penalty - but there seemed to be little positive effect either. But, in one case, we added those footer links several months after launch, and rankings slipped a bit within a few days.

This can't be considered a true test case, because there were too many other variables that were not being controlled. And after all, my one anecdote is far from a proof, in any case. Still, those SERPs were not otherwise changing at the time - no suggestion of heavy dial twisting at Google in the same period.

Today, I would only add this kind of "run of site" linking for traffic purposes, and not hoping for ranking improvement. Even if at the end of the page, I would style such links in highly visible manner and not make them easy to overlook.

[magicMLV]

I have a "family" of international websites (example.com, example.co.uk, example.fr,...). All these site are interlinked through the footer on each page, as some major websites do (but we are not yet a major website). We don't use the no follow attribute. My SEO suggests to remove those international links from internal pages. What's your take on this? (sorry for any English mistake)

[ecmedia]

If you have related websites and just a few of them, interlinking them helps with search results as long as you are not running a link farm. The only time you want to use "no follow" is when you want to send your visitors to a website but do not want to endorse it - we often use it to send to our related sister websites so that G does not penalize us for massive interlinking, but it makes perfect sense to send people to related websites in our network.

[Whitey]

My SEO suggests to remove those international links from internal pages. What's your take on this? (sorry for any English mistake)

Why does your SEO suggest this?

Interlinking can be good for traffic and minimal ranking benefit - it just depends on how it is applied and for what purposes.

[edited by: Whitey at 1:39 am (utc) on Oct. 1, 2007]