Putting blog excerpts in footer of every page?

[ahirai]

I have roughly 150 non-blog pages and 500 articles in my blog.

The footer of every non-blog page includes excerpts from 3 blog posts selected at random from the inventory of 500.

The posts in the footer of each page change with every page refresh.

So, if you scroll to the bottom of any non-blog page, you'll see about 85 words for each of 3 randomly selected blog posts, with a link to the source article in the blog section of my site. Each page will link to 3 different posts.

One of my objectives is to drive visitors to some older blog content that has become buried deep in the archives over the years.

Question 1: In a post-Panda/Penguin world, is this a good or bad technique?

Question 2: Should the links to the full content in the blog use rel="nofollow"? Without it, the internal link structure for this part of the site looks pretty crazy and random - I assume nofollow would help make things look more orderly (and prevent my main non-blog pages from passing excess link juice to my blog).

Thoughts or comments?

[BenFox]

Question 2 first - I don't think there's any need for the no-follow at all. In fact I'm pretty certain Google have gone on record saying that you'll never need to no-follow with internal links.

Question 1 - If you've got some unique content in the main body of the page I wouldn't foresee it being a problem. However you should probably be asking yourself if it's actually of any use to the user? Is the content you're sending them to relevant to what they're looking for and is it improving their overall experience on your site?

[ahirai]

Ben,

Thanks for the reply. I didn't know about the nofollow on the internal links.

Yes, the body of every page has unique content.

My entire site revolves around serving the needs of a specific type of individual, and the content in the body and the content in the blog work together to fill the information needs of the visitor - so hopefully yes, the blog content is relevant.

I see lots of websites incorporating a blog excerpt in the footers or sidebars of their pages (e.g., http://springboard.com/ and http://seoaware.com). The problem I have is that they almost always link to the most recent blog post(s), concentrating attention on a small subset of the blog inventory. That means older, still-relevant, still-useful content is getting neglected. That's the main thing I'm trying to overcome.

I do have good site search so people who know what they are looking for can find it - the problem is that many people don't know what they want until they see it.

Thanks again!

[EGOL]

These are in the footer?   How many people are going all the way down there and clicking on them?  I bet nobody.  If nobody is clicking them then why do this?

I would run crazyegg on a few pages to see if anybody is clicking these links.

The footer of every non-blog page includes excerpts from 3 blog posts selected at random from the inventory of 500.

If you really want to get people into these posts your best bet would be to link to relevant rather than random?  Don't you think?

Almost any blog that has 500 posts is going to have some really good ones and some real sleepers.  I would focus on promoting the really good ones if you want people to click these.

Promote your best. Not random.

So, if you scroll to the bottom of any non-blog page, you'll see about 85 words for each of 3 randomly selected blog posts, with a link to the source article in the blog section of my site. Each page will link to 3 different posts.

Eighty five words for each?  Wow... that is a lot... Way more than I would use. How a bout a title and ten words.  Nobody is going to read these.

I think that you could run into duplicate content issues with this - even though they are shuffled randomly.

Question 1: In a post-Panda/Penguin world, is this a good or bad technique?

You can see my answers above.  I think that the footer is bad location and I think that you should promote your best instead of random.

Question 2: Should the links to the full content in the blog use rel="nofollow"? Without it, the internal link structure for this part of the site looks pretty crazy and random - I assume nofollow would help make things look more orderly (and prevent my main non-blog pages from passing excess link juice to my blog).

I would not use nofollow on links within my own website.  When you use nofollow the pagerank that would have flowed into those links evaporates.  It is lost. Poof!   Instead, allow the pagerank to flow into these pages and out through their links.  If you nofollow you cut off the power.

[ahirai]

Thanks for a very thoughtful reply; I agree that it's important to promote the best content, and I definitely do that.

I misspoke earlier - the excerpts are just the title and 45 words, not 85. Maybe 3 sentences. Do you still think this is a duplicate content risk?

Last, a new question: Can you think of ANY good reason to put blog excerpts in a site-wide footer the way  http://springboard.com/ and http://seoaware.com do? I currently do it randomly; these other sites excerpt the latest posts.

[EGOL]

I think that 45 words is too much.  I would use a title.  Or a title and a few words.  Or, a title and a sexy sentence.

Last, a new question: Can you think of ANY good reason to put blog excerpts in a site-wide footer the way  http://springboard.com/ and http://seoaware.com do?

Yes, but only until I had time to do something better.

[MarieHaynes]

On my site, I have a sidebar widget that links to 10 random pages on my site.  I would love to have it link to 10 relevant pages on my site as EGOL suggests...It's on my list of things to program one day!  

I do feel that these are helpful to me.  The main reason why I like this widget is because I think it helps me keep my pages in Google's index.  My site has over 3000 pages and I think many of them would end up in the supplemental index if they were not regularly linked to internally like they are.

Also, I have it set so that they link using my desired anchor text for the page.  This may help somewhat in my SERPs for each page.

Oh, and all of these links are followed on my site.