Are related sitewide footer links the key to dominating Google?
A lengthy, very long time in the past I was speaking to Mike Grehan about search engine rankings. He used the time period “the wealthy get richer”, to elucidate why websites that reside on the prime of Google are more likely to keep there.
One of the explanations is the convenience of findability.
A author who’s researching a topic on Google is very more likely to click on the highest outcome first. If that net web page solutions the best questions then it might be sufficient to earn a quotation in an article, and that hyperlink will assist fortify the search place.
The wealthy get richer.
I point out this as a result of yesterday I learn an excellent, in-depth publish from Glen Allsopp (aka @Viperchill), which illustrates that the wealthy do certainly get richer, at the least when it comes to search positions.
In this case, the wealthy are main publishing teams.
The approach they’re getting richer is by cross-linking to present and new web sites, from footers and physique copy, that are “continuously altering”.
There’s nothing hideously incorrect with this strategy, nevertheless it’s a little bit of danger to tweak the hyperlinks fairly so typically. Especially when the anchor textual content is one thing aside from the location’s model identify.
As Glen says:
“As anybody who has been concerned in search engine optimisation for a time period may marvel, certainly getting so many sitewide hyperlinks in a brief timeframe ought to increase a little bit of a pink flag?”
It’s fascinating to see that Google not solely tolerates it, however actively rewards this type of behaviour, at the least within the examples highlighted in Glen’s submit.
The brief story is that Hearst was discovered to be linking to a newly launched website, BestProducts, from its portfolio of authority web sites, which incorporates the likes of Cosmopolitan, Elle, Marie Claire and Bazaar.
This helped to place the brand new website on the map in a moderately dramatic approach.
Party onerous in footerland
Here are a few screenshots. The first is from March, when the anchor textual content was ‘Style Reviews’.
The second appeared later, with the hyperlink textual content altering to ‘Beauty Reviews’. Note that the hyperlink placement modified too.
I’m going to imagine that these hyperlinks are dofollow, which is a probably dangerous tactic, and one which has attracted the dreaded guide penalty for some website house owners.
Furthermore, that is clearly one thing that has been carried out with intent. Design, not accident.
Glen says:
“It’s now apparent that the individuals working for Woman’s Day, Marie Claire, Popular Mechanics and Esquire had some conversion that went alongside the strains of, ‘Don’t overlook, at this time’s the day we have now to place these hyperlinks to Best Products within the footer.’”
But did it work?
The outcomes
Glen estimates that BestProducts attracted at the least 600,000 referrals from Google (natural) in April 2016, so yep, it has labored extremely nicely.
Here are a few of the positions that the location has bagged in little over half a yr, from a standing begin:
Pretty superb, proper? Some fairly huge, broad phrases there.
Glen reckons that the next sixteen corporations – and the manufacturers they personal – dominate Google outcomes.
Credit to http://kaiserthesage.com/
I suspect that when you take a look at different industries, corresponding to automotive rent, the place a number of manufacturers personal lots of of sub-manufacturers, that you simply’ll see comparable techniques and outcomes.
We are household?
The standout query for me isn’t whether or not Hearst and its friends are systematically outsmarting Google with an easy sitewide hyperlink technique, nor whether or not that technique will maintain up. It is extra about whether or not Google really understands associated entities.
Does it know that these websites are linked to at least one one other by having the identical dad or mum firm? And does that low cost the hyperlink techniques in play right here?
Certainly one of many webspam group would have the ability to spot that one website was associated to a different, have been it flagged for a guide motion. So is Google turning a blind eye?
Here’s what Matt Cutts stated about associated websites, again in 2014:
“If you have got 50 totally different websites, I wouldn’t hyperlink to all 50 websites down within the footer of your website, as a result of that may begin to look fairly spammy to customers. Instead you may simply hyperlink to not more than three or 4 or 5 down within the footer, that type of factor, or have a hyperlink to a worldwide web page, and the worldwide web page can speak about all of the totally different variations and nation variations of your website.”
“If you’ve received stuff that’s all on one space, like .com, and also you’ve obtained 50 or one hundred totally different web sites, that’s one thing the place I’d be actually much more cautious about linking them collectively.”
“And that’s the kind of factor the place I wouldn’t be stunned if we don’t need to essentially deal with the hyperlinks between these totally different web sites precisely the identical as we might deal with them as editorial votes from another website.”
Note that Matt talks about hyperlinks to different websites, versus “hyperlinks with descriptive and ever-altering anchor textual content”. Somewhat totally different.
Screw hub pages, launch hub websites
Internal linking works greatest when there’s a clear technique in place. That usually means determining a taxonomy and customary vocabulary prematurely. It additionally means understanding the paths you need to create for guests, to assist pull them in the direction of different pages, or on this case, different websites. These ought to mirror key enterprise objectives.
With all that in thoughts, I assume it’s fairly sensible, I actually do, however let’s see the way it performs out. And clearly it takes a wealthy portfolio of authority web sites to play this hand, so yeah… the wealthy get richer.
Assuming this technique works out in the long term we will anticipate to see tons extra area of interest websites being launched by the large publishing teams, underpinned by this type of cross-website linking.
Ok, so this fluid footer linking strategy definitely sails a bit near the wind and we might not have heard the final of this story, nevertheless it as soon as once more proves absolutely the energy of hyperlinks in placing a website on the map. Take any statements about hyperlinks not being mattering a lot in 2016 with a big bucket of salt.
At any fee, Glen’s publish is nicely value a learn. Do test it out, and share your ideas under.
