Site Footer Links Used for Keyword Spam

[RosemaryB]

I was on the phone with a proposed web relaunch firm for one of my clients listening to them talk about their deep SEO knowledge. I cannot believe that this wouldn’t be considered black-hat or at least very Spammy in which case a client could be in trouble.

On this vendor’s site I notice that they stack the footer site map with about 50 links that are basically keywords they are trying to rank for. But here’s the kicker shown by way of example from one of the themes in the footer:

9 footer links:
Top PR Firms
Best PR Firms
Leading PR Firms
CyberSecurity PR Firms
Cyber Security PR Firms
Technology PR Firms
PR Firm
Government PR Firms
Public Sector PR Firms

Each link goes to a unique URL that is basically a knock-off of the homepage with a few words or at the most one sentences swapped out to include this footer link keyword phrase, sometimes there is a different title attribute but generally they are a close match to each other.

The canonical for each page links back to itself.

I simply can’t believe Google doesn’t consider this Spammy.

Interested in your view.
Rosemary

[Joe.Robison]

This is definitely an old-school tactic that used to work, but doesn't work as much anymore. My opinion is that this particular tactic is not working too well for them anymore, but they haven't updated those sections. The funniest part is that they have "CyberSecurity PR Firms" & "Cyber Security PR Firms" pages to capture the tiny nuance in spelling.

From what I've witnessed, landing pages built with SEO in mind do still work, and can be a best practice, but not to the degree that this firm is doing it. They should combine a lot of those pages, build out the content a lot more on each page to make each page genuinely useful, and improve links, social shares, and CRO on each page if they really want to improve those. Just doing a quick search of the "Cyber Security PR Firms" term I didn't see any site in the top few results that looked like the one you're talking about, so it seems that this isn't working for them

So the answer isn't black and white. It's not about having 50 keyword targeted pages vs nothing at all. If you look at HubSpot, they have a lot of landing pages that focus on their software's features, such as https://www.hubspot.com/products/marketing-automation. Or Zapier's many app pages https://zapier.com/zapbook/.

At one point I thought this tactic was completely gone, but if done well it can do a lot of good!

[RosemaryB]

In addition, with symantic search Google knows that these two phrases are the same:

CyberSecurity PR Firms
Cyber Security PR Firms

They also do the same with Cybersecurity agency or firm.

Imagine telling a client to have all these individual landing pages!

[SamClicks]

I see a lot of it Rosemary. You'd think it would be penalised but it actually appears to work quite well for some. I see some agencies with stacks of keywords in the footer, in fairness, generally they do link to landing pages with plenty of good content and they are getting results.

I think that having a few linking to high quality pages is something that works quite well. Having loads linking to poor quality pages is not good and also is rubbish from a UX perspective.

[seoman10]

Definitely a risky tactic.

What I would do is to:-

1. Create a blog and add content optimised around the different keywords.
2. Enhance the homepage to give Google more of an idea of what the site is about
3. Create proper landing pages for some of the main keywords, maybe with case studies, content, services offered etc

You may also find some of those keywords not necessary or too low search volume/competitive to worry about.  As you said Google semantic search is very intelligent, It would treat Top PR Firms & Best PR Firms as basically the same slightly favouring one or the other for an exact match.  There again if you have high enough authority that will be outweighed.

[RosemaryB]

Thanks everyone.  I sure don't intend to use this tactic because it looks awful on a website and I would hate to have Google decide it was spammy .

Rosemary