"Spammy" Footer Links

[kingcobra]

Hey gang, I've had a few people tell me that my very "generous" footer links are spammy. So I'm planning a test and I thought I'd share the results with you folks. In case you're interested in a before and after here, the test page without the links is live and you can view the regular version in the cache. I feel like I'm exposing myself naked to the world here as I've really tweaked this piece of work a lot and have made huge gains from it and expect a bloodbath in the SERPs without it

My IBP analysis score is going to take a nosedive and bye bye good KW ratios but we'll see what Google says.
In order to track this I have an index I use right now of a collection of stable rankings, and the index is 106 right now which is the starting point. So I'm going to keep it up at least until the next googlebot visit and report the results.

There are several benefits that I derived from these links and simply having internal links on a page is a good thing. During the last PR update I had 3 internal pages go from PR0 to PR1 and one of them is my main link directory page and the ONLY thing on that page is 68 internal links, and not a single backlink or anything else, which is food for thought but didn't surprise me. I once had a page like this rank #1 for the site title and I had to add some to the home page to knock it off. I've also done quite a bit of research here and sites which have a lot of internal links on the home page do better all other things being equal. In fact this really is one of my secrets and I don't want to give them all away but I've found this to be a significant factor at least so far. Is it still though? That's why I'm doing this.

if you want to make some comments as to how much you don't like these footer links or that you think I'm crazy to have this etc etc feel free as it will make things more interesting. I'll eat crow if it turns out that my site is better off without it which means I get a more than insignificant boost from losing it.


In the end by flipping this back it's only a short term hit and I'm always up to test stuff so here goes

[The Poker Jerk]

Regardless of how it looks to SE's, it can't be good in terms of retaining readers... I know I close the window of any site I see that has a ton of links listed one after the other, as if the webmaster has no intention of making his site useful for me, only catering to search engines.

Nonetheless, I look forward to seeing your results!

[kingcobra]

Originally Posted by The Poker Jerk

Regardless of how it looks to SE's, it can't be good in terms of retaining readers... I know I close the window of any site I see that has a ton of links listed one after the other, as if the webmaster has no intention of making his site useful for me, only catering to search engines.

Nonetheless, I look forward to seeing your results!

Well the links are at the bottom and the average reader isn't going to dream of them being there for the SE's actually and a lot of webmasters wouldn't even realize this either. You're right though in that you do want to keep the visitors in mind but I get a high percentage of folks moving on and a lot of them use these links in fact. As a matter of fact my bounce rate might increase here without the links which visitors can and do use

I've always worried more about getting people there in the first place though and then worry about keeping them there. That's why I measure things in terms of pageviews and you want to always shoot for as many as you can get and in particular the inner pageviews.

[Randy]

What kind of pageviews per visitor are you seeing, Ken?

[kingcobra]

I get around 5 or so on average which good compared to the industry average I guess which Google says is around 3. I'm sure there are some sites that do quite a bit better than this and I'd be interested in what you get for instance

Of course I'm sure I get more webmasters poking around than you do who are only there for link related matters

Speaking of that I'm looking at my backlinks the other day and I do try to do these in a controlled manner and I see some guy from England who I exchanged links with 4-5 sites I guess and I find out later he's got me on a footer link on all the pages on all his sites and we're talking over a thousand here. Don't try this at home boys and girls. There's a baseline that's established and when you go over it this much this fast there's some pain involved. I was wondering why I came down a little lately. That stuff only hurts you for a little while thankfully

[TheGooner]

Originally Posted by kingcobra

I get around 5 or so on average which good compared to the industry average I guess which Google says is around 3. I'm sure there are some sites that do quite a bit better than this and I'd be interested in what you get for instance

Page views is a very curious metric to take too seriously, especially as it is no measure of site effectiveness.

If someone comes to our sites via a "bookmark" and lands on the frontpage then YES, I'll like to think that we offer 3,4,5+ pages of information for their visit.

But if someone comes via google and a longtailed search term (say looking for a specific poker room review) then frankly I'm overjoyed if by pageview count is just ONE - as long as they then departed off to the poker room in question to signup.

So 5 pages per visit can be good, or it could be a sign that visitors can't find what they want. Similarly, a 1 page visit to the front page is bad, but to a review page it could be excellent !

[kingcobra]

Originally Posted by TheGooner

Page views is a very curious metric to take too seriously, especially as it is no measure of site effectiveness.

If someone comes to our sites via a "bookmark" and lands on the frontpage then YES, I'll like to think that we offer 3,4,5+ pages of information for their visit.

But if someone comes via google and a longtailed search term (say looking for a specific poker room review) then frankly I'm overjoyed if by pageview count is just ONE - as long as they then departed off to the poker room in question to signup.

So 5 pages per visit can be good, or it could be a sign that visitors can't find what they want. Similarly, a 1 page visit to the front page is bad, but to a review page it could be excellent !

Or to the home page and bouncing by clicking on a banner and signing up Keep in mind that the discussion here is bouncing at the home page due to being scared off by a bunch of links on there versus making it to the rest of the site.

Of course a lot of this depends on the site as well and mine up until very recently required them to move on from the home page as I had no external links and it's also the entry page of almost all new visitors. So in this case at least getting past first base is a requirement. I've now got an external link on there and I'm more than happy to have them exit through it and preferably they will come back. With some other sites pageloads are going to be less of an issue. However it's an important metric overall even though it's importance does vary as you say.

Obviously you also want to look at visitors as well in addition to a lot of other things and if you remember I did say that I look at pageviews more and that doesn't mean everyone should though I get almost all of my traffic coming looking for poker lessons and such and if they aren't reading them like they should well that's going to be a concern So the stages for me is getting the traffic, then getting them to on average visit other pages at least somewhat, and in particular visit some of the pages specifically designed to convert them. So I'm looking at the traffic flow overall and in particular the traffic flow to these pages, and to a higher degree than many sites would in fact. So pageviews are going to be a curious yet important metric for me I can't imagine how this would be indicative of them not finding what they want but if they are rooting around looking then they are exposed to more of your external links so that would be good I guess

[kingcobra]

Google stopped by and gave me a thumbs down to this idea - not a big one mind you but enough to have me putting them back up. I'm actually surprised that the difference wasn't more significant than it is though.

[kingcobra]

So Googlebot comes back again and this time I have everything back like it was. Index was 106 originally, went up to 110 with the stuff off, now down to 81 with improvement on some rankings I haven`t seen in a while and the all time best for ALL of the KW`s that comprise it. Verrry interrrresting I know they like new content and lots of internal links but the net result when all said and done surprised the heck out of me as I was expecting only a small improvement here. My thinking now is that you need to change things around on page to have the off page stuff kick in.