Links can appear in a number of areas of a site. Search spiders can now differentiate content from ad boxes, sidebars and footers, so it’s now more important than ever to choose where you get your links. I’m not saying that if a site with PR 7 decides to give you an ad in the sidebar that you shouldn’t take it – you should, because clearly you will benefit from that link, however there are a few things to consider:
- Sitewide Links – the ones often found in sidebars. They can sometimes be ok, such as the example above, or if a seed site or authority site is providing the link. Also, if you are a subsidiary of a company, it is perfectly natural to have a link in all of your footers. The problem will start to show itself when your site suddenly starts receiving 10,000 links from just a handful of root domains. This is because similar link quantities per domain can be associated with poorly implemented paid link building campaigns.
- Standalone – links found outside of main bodies of text, or a link that does not fit the general aesthetic of the webpage. Due to the later versions of Google’s Search Algorithm, this type of activity can have these links discounted from your SERP calculations.
- Footer - Like the two links above, they are usually out of place (apart from the circumstance above). Having footer links can harm campaigns, negatively affecting your ranking if you take part in this too much.
- Content – basically the areas that are left! The links on a page should ideally be placed within bodies of text, and they should add to the users understanding of the subject area, and add relevance and trust to the article it is in. (Obviously the end game is to get that trust and link juice back down to your website through that link)
So that was another quick instalment – I hope you like how they’re developing. I’m going to try to write on this blog at least every 48 hours!
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