Footer links VS Page links - Which one is best?

[artdivision]

Hello all

I was wondering if someone could advise me on a link building question. If you wish to create a couple of landing pages for different locations with anchor text link building etc is it better to have a page like this web site here: http://www.acorncommercial.co.uk/commercial-property/development-sites/

or quick footer links like this web site here?: http://www.robertholmes.co.uk/ (click on quick links at the bottom).

I would like to know if there is a difference from an SEO perspective or if they are considered black hat. Your advise would be much appreciated!

Yiannis

[TomRayner]

Hi Yiannis

First of all, I'd ensure that either link is both earned, is contextual and doesn't look like it's been placed solely to pass PageRank. If it's a relevant link to a site that will help the user, you should be fine.

If all other things being equal - I believe that a link within the content of a page would be more valuable than a link in the footer.  Now, other things might affect the strength of the links, such as number of inbound links, outbound links and more.  But if you had the choice of a link on the same page either in the content of the page or blog post or in the footer, I believe you'd see stronger results if the link was placed in the content of the page.

Hope this helps.

[artdivision]

Hi Tom and thank you very much for your swift response.

I understand completely the "link within the content of a page" concept and totally agree but if you see the first link I posted there is NO content at all just a list of long tail keyword anchro text links.

Same goes for the second page but that looks more natural to me than the first example and with only 10 links as "quick footer links"

You think that having them on page even without content is still better than footers?

Thank you very much in advance!

[Jarvatar]

For me it depends on the design.  The search engine robot gobbles text or code if you will in order.  So if there's no other content in the way and it's a page full of links then either one will do.  The first link gets the most juice but they all get divided by the number of links.  So while it may be a good idea to do a site map of sorts it's not necessarily boosting your site as much as it is helping to map it.  Since you didn't say it was a sitemap directly, then I'd say design it for google & people.

Since there's no content, I don't really think it matters.