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Free Wordpress Templates Can Kill Your SEO
We have all downloaded and used free templates for skinning our Wordpress blogs, heck, my original design was a fantastic them called “The Wind Cries Mary.”
When you download free templates, all of them have links in the footer. Sometimes, these links are visible and located directly under the designer’s name and sometimes they are black on black and your can’t see them. Go into your blog and click Design>Theme Editor. In the theme editor, click on Footer.PHP. If you look very carefully, will find them there. Packing the footer with links is known as link stuffing and is considered a spam technique.
Link stuffing can get your into major trouble. Googles terms say NO F*UCKING SPAM. And they mean it. Tons of non-relevant links in the footer could violate Google’s terms of use and get your site banned and you would not even know it.
Since Wordpress is an OpenSource application and most components are entirely free, you are responsible for what you download. You need to make sure your components are SEO friendly.
Can you remove these footers? Sometimes, but sometimes they are encrypted and you are better off buying a template and customizing it.