How And/Or If To Prune Footer Links

[94501]

Hi,

I have a site with a site-wide footer that currently has 28 internal links.The footer terms are the terms the pages are focused on.

This footer is on every page of the site (hundreds of pages). Some pages of my site have 10 or so additional links pointing to internal and external pages (besides the footer) and some pages (like the homepage) have about 50 links besides the footer.

I'm going for a half dozen new terms with new pages that I would be adding to the site-wide footer.

Do you think I should trim the existing footer before adding these new terms? I guess I would remove the terms that show no real hope of ever getting to page one... like pages stuck in the 40s. Or, pages I for whatever reason don't care much if they rank or not.

Would trimming it to a smaller number do more to help the remaining linked pages/terms?

What do you think? Thanks!

[RyanKent]

When reviewing the links on your pages, there is one primary focus: what links are valuable to users. The only other thought I consider is legalities such as a requirement to provide a Privacy Policy link on the home page.

I would recommend performing analysis to determine which links are being used by your visitors. If a link isn't being used, remove it. Links affect how your page rank flows throughout your site. For optimal SEO you want to direct your link juice to valued pages.

Consider also most used don't ever see or use footer links. In my experience 28 footer links would be far too many for most sites. Every site is different and perhaps you might have a legitimate need for that many, but that is usually not the case.

[94501]

Thanks, but I wasn't asking about U/X.

[RyanKent]

Would trimming it to a smaller number do more to help the remaining linked pages/terms?

In that case, short answer: Yes**.**

The fewer the number of links you have on a page, the more juice will flow to those pages. You should also be aware that footer links are thought to be less valuable then links in content.

[94501]

Thanks, Ryan and duly noted about links in context. Do you think buttons higher up the page would be more valuable than footer links?

[RyanKent]

Do you think buttons higher up the page would be more valuable than footer links?

Yes. I should clarify and state that is my personal belief. The only official confirmation I am aware of is a single statement from Matt Cutts where he states "Google reserves the right to treat footer links differently from other links". Extrapolating from that statement and using logic, it seems the more visible a link is, the more weight would be applied to it.

[94501]

Thanks, Ryan!