Links from the footer still work !! Google, what are you doing?

I planned this week to make a little vacation for myself, but on Monday I decided to write this article under the influence of the read post “ External Promotion Factors ” (MyOST: which we will translate ).

But before starting, I want to warn you that this post will be sharp , this is because during my research I discovered something that I consider very unfair and fundamentally wrong.

Wrong not only for webmasters, but also for users of search engines, because first of all they suffer from it.

From the very beginning, I have chosen for myself the rule that I will post only what works in practice, and does not exist in theory.

Today we will talk about what affects the ranking of pages by search engines, but at the same time, Google does not want to pay enough attention to this important factor.

what influences the ranking of pages by search engines

From my past experiments, it became known that the quantity and quality of links, together with the correct anchor text, are very significant factors that search engines take into account when ranking, there are no secrets here, this is common knowledge.

I have always been a supporter of link diversity , so I tried to get links from as many sources as possible, it seemed to me in such a case that links would look more natural and would be considered better search engines.

You can imagine my surprise when I learned that reference diversity is the smallest factor that is taken into account when ranking, but this is not all, have patience and read to the end.

You can only imagine how badly I was upset, what I believed was wrong, but still I decided to figure out the reason why this happened.

I found several sites with 20, 30 thousand links from just 300 domains , how did they manage to get such a large number of links from a relatively small number of sites? Maybe these sites have several directories for links? Or maybe they posted 10,000 articles with their links ?? NO

The whole secret why the level of diversity of their links turned out to be less than 1% despite the fact that these links were in the footer.

If you put links in the footer on every page of the site, then you can easily get thousands of links from one domain, OK , there’s nothing criminal in it, but can such links transfer enough weight to influence the ranking of the site they lead to ??

Let's digress for a moment and watch a video that Matt Cutts published a month ago:

Does Google take into account when ranking the links from the footer like the rest (from the content, sidebars, title) ?? hmm

If you have not watched this video, Matt states that since the beginning of PageRank, Google search engine has reserved the right to take different links into account in different ways.

I want to share my thoughts on this (I’m still sure that I think correctly)
“ Google, please not only reserve this right but also use it, then the index will be much better and more reliable .”

The essence of my problem with links in the footer is very simple, everyone can add links to the footer and thus you can place your links on hundreds, or even thousands of pages of the site, all pages will transfer their weight through anchor text to your site.

Add a tone of links with just 50 - 100 different sites and you will see how your site rises, just takes off in the sickle of Google, is that true ?

In your opinion, which page should be ranked higher : with 50,000 inbound links from 500 domains or 10,000 with 2500 domains ?? Which one deserves more confidence?

Tim, do you really say that the total reference weight should be based on a variety of reference sources, and not on the number of references themselves?

No, the number should still be taken into account, since several links from the same site can be qualitative, but my deep conviction should still have a priority in reference weight for a variety of reference sources, otherwise Google should reconsider their attitude to links from the footer and do not take into account when ranking 1000 links from the footer.

My advice is this, if you need to promote a site in a short time , place your links with the " correct " anchors in the footer of the pages of 100 sites, and you will soon notice the positive effect of this method.

However, Google would “close the shop” sooner or later, as soon as they notice that their sickle is overflowing with websites that have climbed to the top like this.

I discussed this problem with such gurus as Rand Fishkin, Ben Hendrickson and Nick Gerner from SEOmoz, they agreed with my conclusions, but also added that this picture is not everywhere, for example Google ranks the site from the .co.uk domain zone and in different ways. com.

According to their observations, Google is paying more attention to the link diversity for sites in the .com zone. At the same time, this factor is not so much taken into account when ranking sites in the .co.uk zone. The reason for this seems we will never know. Google, please be more selective when ranking!

MyOST : honestly, I don’t understand why it’s such a revelation to the author of this article. Draft by Google has always been valued, and very much appreciated, and drafts in the footer - the usual matter. Suppose a design studio copyright is always in the footer, why should it be valued less than another placement option? And given the fact that using CSS, a footer for a user can even be in a header at the level of html code?

If we consider the philosophical question of "drafts", then I do not agree that Google should somehow discriminate it, because to buy or put 1 link from a resource is more accessible than making a draft. Draft will be more expensive, and not every site owner agrees to put it. On the contrary, I would give more advantages to this placement option, IMHO. Although Yandex does not do this