My seo company has a footer link that links to my site by keyword will this effect my rankings

[Casefun]

My old SEo company has a footer link by keyword to my site so it acts like a site wide link will this effect my rankings.

My site was in the top 5 for many keywords now page 2 and 3 so I am trying to see what has effected it as we havent changed what we do

[edwardrj]

There are lots of possibilities here -- what sort of "optimization" has your SEO company provided you with? Backlink campaigns? On-page "optimization?" Funnily enough, the footer link probably hurts them more than it does you, as Google isn't a big fan of sitewide "credit" links. Still, I'd remove it if I were you. It's a matter of principal and there's no point in passing PageRank to your SEO company (who isn't doing a very good job apparently).

As far as determining the cause for your site's drop, the best place to start is to determine the approximate date of the traffic drop and then find out about any Google updates implemented around the date. Then you can move forward to hopefully clean up the issues.

[Francisco_Meza]

If you want to test it out, do a nofollow on that link. If your site bounces back, then it was an algorithm thing.

[RyanKent]

Your site is a textbook example of a site that Penguin is designed to affect. It is highly likely your site has either incurred a manual penalty for manipulative links or has been slapped by Penguin. In either case, you have a hard road ahead of you.

The footer link from your web developer needs to go:

http://www.perrovista.com/

The footer link from your SEO company, almost all of your directory links (keep Dmoz of course), and the other spammy links you have acquired over the years all need to be deleted. This is a long hard process which begins by pulling a comprehensive report of all backlinks to your site, then identifying the manipulative links and removing them.

Example pages linking to you:

http://www.spicecompanyofvermont.com/

http://www.freewebsitedirectory.com/detail/link-432907.html

http://ssl.urlshack.com/Shopping/page-28.html

[Casefun]

Hi there so how do I tell which links to go and how do I delete them as my old seo company did them Do I have to ask them to do it

[Casefun]

The freewebsitedirectory one for example is that the type of link we should delete what is the reason thanks for your help

[RyanKent]

You would need to contact them and request the link to be removed or have the nofollow attribute added.

[RyanKent]

The freewebsitedirectory link is one of many directory link examples from your backlink profile which violations Google's Quality Guidelines. More specifically, this type of link is classified as part of a link scheme designed to manipulative search rankings.

This link falls under the classification of "Low-quality directory or bookmark site links". This type of link can directly lead to a penalty or Penguin issue.

[Casefun]

Okay thank you very useful I will bring this up with my new seo provider who are saying just concentrate on getting new high quality links I have had 2 seo providers before is there a way of seeing who did these links if not I will contact them both

[RyanKent]

Okay thank you very useful I will bring this up with my new seo provider who are saying just concentrate on getting new high quality links

Frankly, this type of response from SEO providers upsets me greatly. Let's take a step back for a moment.

In the past you desired to increase your website traffic / sales so you reached out to two SEO providers. They "helped" you by building manipulative links to your website. As a result, your site is now penalized for manipulative links.

You now are reaching out to a new SEO provider for help. Their answer is to build new, better manipulative links to drown out the old lower quality manipulative links. You are OK with that?

There is a saying. Shame me once, shame on you. Shame me twice, shame on me. At this point you have enough education to understand manipulative links are a violation of Google Guidelines. The loss of traffic and sales has apparently not sent the message Google desires which is....do not build any manipulative links.

So what is your plan? You are going to pay this SEO company to build more links? Here is my prediction. Ultimately you will pay to have all the old links removed AND the new ones being built by your new provider. In the meantime, you will lose months worth of sales to competitors.

You likely have not used any SEO service but rather link building services. There is a huge difference. The guy who changes your oil is not a mechanic. The guy who can just build links is not a SEO. If you are going to run a successful website, you need to understand the difference.

[Casefun]

We now use a SEO company rather than just a link builder which I understand why you are saying that. They have said that content is very important as well as Social Media and they have put this is in place.

But you still need link building as to gain authority to your site what they have said to me is less is more but they have to be from reputable high quality authoritive sites.

But I think we also need to have the old links deleted. We are not totally penalised as we have stopped ranking but just gone down by a page which obviously has more than halved our traffic.