text links

Are these links any good?

[brancook]

Hi everyone,

I'm new here at webmasters world and I had a question I was hoping to get some input one. I'm currently redesigning my companies website, you can see it here:

<snip>

As you can see it is in serious need of a redesign. At the bottom of the home page(and some of the others) we have some text links that are keywords to different pages on our site. Example: Switch-Displacement Force Testers, Chocolate Temper meters.

My question is, should I keep these keyword links in my redesign. I really don't like how they are just random links at the bottom of the page, they just seem to be for search engine purposes and I was hoping to actually use keyword links within the text of the main paragraphs.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Brandon

[edited by: martinibuster at 5:04 pm (utc) on Nov. 4, 2006]
[edit reason] See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[brancook]

<snip>?

How can I get questions answered about my site when I can't show examples. I didn't place a link, and I'm not promoting my site in any way, it's a legit question I'm asking not self promotion.

[buckworks]

You get advice by framing your questions in terms that focus on the underlying principles involved, not a specific example.

That takes careful thought, but the resulting discussions are much more useful to the community over time than just site review questions.

[Lexur]

Most of us dont't care about your site but about (maybe) usefulness of footer links.

[brancook]

Are footer links useful?

[buckworks]

Yes, they can be useful but make sure they make good sense to human visitors, don't just use them as an SEO tactic.

[caveman]

It's probably fair to say that the conservative view is that footer links are best used for pages of universal interest, e.g., About Us, Privacy, Contact, etc.

It's also fair to to say that footer links of the kind you note have been and continue to be used with some success for SEO purposes.

The SE's have the ability to assign levels of importance to the location of links on a page. For example links that appear high on a page are probably given much more importance than links that appear low on a page. I'm also of the opinion that footer links are the lowest form of site navigation, no pun intended. So I think their usefulness has been substantially mitigated over the years. That's not to say they are not useful, just far less so than used to be the case.

There is also the issue that they look sorta spammy, so in the event of a hand check of your site by a SE rep, they probably don't help the checker's reaction to the site.

If you care about the site long term, it may be worth limiting your linking structure to a more conservative style, and to be led by what makes sense for a user navigating the site, as opposed to trying to squeeze a little extra juice out of the SE's.

My 2 cents.

[brancook]

The current use of footer links on the old site does seem a bit spammy. A link may even appear twice just under a different keyword.

I wouldn't actually even classify them as footer links.

I've read that links with in the text are very good. For instance in the main paragraphs and descriptions of our company would placing the links in there be better?

[caveman]

Yes, but of course it's also good to make sure that basic site nav is well thought through and easy to use.

[brancook]

The footer links I was going to keep were: site map, upcoming events, contact us, map to us, ect...

[rj87uk]

I would put the links to your deep pages in the body (content) of your home page, and keep the footer links for contact us, about us and so on.

Again like others have said this is better for the visitors and that is what Google wants to see.

RJ

[buckworks]

Something to watch for is the balance of unique content on your pages. Watch the proportions between your unique content and the navigation / footer links and anything else that is common to multiple pages. You need to make sure your pages won't seem "too similar" to the search engines. The footer-links-for-SEO technique that can work nicely in small doses might come back to bite you if it's overdone. Links woven into the body content would have the major virtue of uniqueness.

Like so many things in life, moderation is the key. There's an art to pushing the limits without pushing your luck.

[brancook]

Great!

Thanks for the info. everyone. I was nervous about noting keeping all of the links but they just seemed so spammy to me that I think it's another change that I need to make.

Thanks
Again

[caveman]

There's an art to pushing the limits without pushing your luck.

Buckworks, can I use that line? It's great! ;-)

[brancook]

That is a great line.

[greenleaves]

I agree with all the advice given, and would like to add:

Check to see if the pages that are linked to in the footer rank well and get a lot of traffic. If they do, I would be wary of removing anything that could affect the ranking of these pages.

If on the other hand these pages don't rank well, I would follow the advice given.

It is best to follow best practices, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[brancook]

All of the pages of our site including the pages from the footer keyword links have a Google page rank of 4/10.

[martinibuster]

All of the pages of our site including the pages from the footer keyword links have a Google page rank of 4/10.

As has been previously mentioned, a thoughtful navigation structure will help keep your content as close to the top as possible. Further expansion can be made in interlinking similar topics.

Green widget Hub
green widget article 1
green widget article 2
green widget article 3
green widget article 4
green widget article 5
green widget article 6

The hub is linked to from the home page. The articles are linked to from the hub. Each article links back to the hub. Each article links to each other. This is good for the user and will encourage surfing to similar topics, but it also refers the spider to similar content. I've had good experience in obtaining indented listings using that format.

I don't think that linking to a large amount of web pages from the home page is a good solution to the problem of ranking internal pages. No solution beats inbound deep links, so I always try to create a good navigational structure and obtain inbound links to strategic hub pages.

[Bennie]

Nice post MB, great advice. Especially for split listings and where to direct your internal links.

:D