Google Penguin question re: footer links

[ArtDriver]

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[ZacharyRussell]

Hello,

I think that your footer links could hurt you, especially with the same anchor text in over 15,000 pages. I think there is a way to manage this a little better. You could try to vary your keywords a bit, instead of using "web development" use "Web Design", also different phrases "Website Developed By ArtDriver". I also saw that you did online marketing (SEO), you can say "Website Development and Online Marketing by ArtDriver" I think by finding 4-6 different phrases can actually help you to avoid spamming (anchor text) and also to rank for some different keywords.

Hope this helps

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Oleksiy,

I think you're right on the money being concerned about Penguin. Looking at your anchor text profile in OSE:

http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/anchors?site=www.artdriver.com

...I'd guess you're a prime candidate at getting hit for the terms "web development" and any terms related to that.

If you still have control over those footer links, I'd work to both prune (remove) and diversify.

1. Instead of placing sitewide footer links, how about just one link per website?
2. And instead of a footer link, how about a single, well placed editorial link somewhere on a real page? (this might be hard to manage with some of your clients, but it's worth a shot)
3. If you must have to have a sitewide link, I'd remove  keywords from the link and only include your domain address, like this:

"Web Development by http://www.artdriver.com/"

See what I did there? (pretty impressed with myself   You don't need to do this for every link, but my guess is that adding diversity will definitely help.

[ArtDriver]

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[imavex]

We recently added a rel="nofollow" tag to our footer links that contained anchor text and, though difficult to know if this was causative, we have seen Google ranking improve overall v.s. 1 month ago and v.s. 1 week ago. In our case, many of those links were referenced at a single source so we were able to make a mass change.

A client of ours is doing the same thing, but rather than anchor text, they have an image with a consistent image alt text. I am guessing the same logic would prevail here? Would the alt text be considered in the same way as anchor text?

Also, Cyrus, what are your thoughts on using the nofollow tag as a fix? Although your suggestions 1 and 2 seem ideal, is there any thought about why a followed brand name link would be preferred to a nofollow link?