Should You Link Back from Client's Website?
-
We had a discussion in the office today, about if it can help or hurt you to link back to your site from one that you optimize, host, or manage.
A few ideas that were mentioned:
HURT:
1. The website is not directly related to your niche, therefore Google will treat it as a link exchange or spammy link.
2. Links back to you are often not surrounded by related text about your services, and looks out of place to users and Search Engines.HELP:
1. On good (higher PR, reputable domain) domains, a link back can add authority, even if the site is not directly related to your services.
2. Allows high ranking sites to show users who the provider is, potentially creating a new client, and a followed incoming link on anchor text you can choose.So, what do you think? Test results would be appreciated, as we are trying to get real data. Benefits and cons if you have an opinion.
-
Hi everyone
We have read through all these comments, but still not sure what to do about this. We do church web design, and our link would be on church websites. That seems relevant to me.
These responses go back to 2014. Is there any current advice or information on this topic?
Thanks:-)
-
As someone who used to work at a company on the Recommended list (and who was in charge of the Contact form) - we did get leads. They were about 80% appropriate for the business model, although a lot were too small or wanting short-term projects (my agency generally took on corporate-level accounts for long periods of time). I would say that this sort of linking is different to just linking to clients, e.g. if we then went on to link to an insurance company that came to us through a Moz Recommended referral. But if your SEO company partners with a PPC agency or design firm, provides some services to the other and sends out a relevant link, that seems a little more relevant.
On the other hand, I hate these discussions about what we're "allowed" to link to
-
Under No Circumstances do I see this to be something you should do. I often advise clients to get any link which isn't giving value to the user off the site ASAP.
Often that includes "Site created by ..." Lowest of the low I'm afraid.
So that's a No from me!
-
People who come to Moz are in the same niche as the recommended companies. It'd be way different if I had the same link at the bottom of my site that's about model battleships.
-
I'd think -- or hope! -- that Google Penguin or something else would stop that result at some point.
-
I hear a potential YouMoz post?
Footer links may not refer a lot of valuable traffic. But other types of pages could. For example: I'm sure the businesses that are on Moz's recommended list get leads. Pages with similar types of (no-follow) links could do the same (rather than footer links).
-
Only robots who don't buy anything.
-
To be honest, I doubt anyone really gets much referral business from footer links no follow or not. It clearly a way of getting authority high pr links for free.
-
I'd love to see a case study from a firm talking about the amount of traffic they get from these links, and if it turns into any leads or sales for them.
-
Ive seen a company in Glasgow that does this to the extreme. In fact they rank for "seo glasgow" and their link profile is made up of all footer links. seo by seo glasgow and they rank well. web design by "web design glasgow" etc
-
Yes, that is better.... but you will only be able to do it on websites that tolerate unpaid advertising.
-
Thumbed-up for being what I would do!
-
What about something like : "Site design By Company Link" that is no-follow? That way you can get direct traffic but doesnt pass link juice?
-
With owner permission "having your name on the site in unlinked text" seems the best to do.
I remember the penalty story of 'Web Design Yorkshire by Pinpoint Designs' - http://moz.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-google-penalty-removal
<greyhat>Need to vary anchor text if you do it :).</greyhat>
-
CNN, Tribune, and other big companies often have both in-house people and agencies. I know people who are at (or were at) both CNN and the Tribune who are in-house SEOs who work with contracted agencies.
-
I would advise against it for one simple reason: You would be directly violating Google's guidelines and setting both you and your clients up for potential penalties.
Google states: Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.
If you actively build a do-follow link on another site for the purposes of affecting search results, then you are doing exactly this.
-
CNN, WJS, Today, and ESPN have their own in-house team of developers and designers. i think that's not a good example.
Having a link to your website from a client website as you say yes is a good advertising as a web developer agency or hosting company. they are outsourcing services which means to them less head ache and saving money because they don't have to buy a server or have a full time in-house developer and SEO specialist which from my point will be a fair trade of having the companies link on their website as well as sometimes the agencies put their clients links on their websites as success stories or current customers.
-
Allows high ranking sites to show users who the provider is, potentially creating a new client, and a followed incoming link on anchor text you can choose.
My answer on this has nothing to do with SEO.
It has to do with where I believe the role of a service provider is supposed to begin and end.
I personally think that SEOs linking back to their own sites from a client site is low form. The SEO is supposed to be helping the client not siphoning his power. You could accomplish that visibility by simply having your name on the site in unlinked text. Adding a link is unnecessary and greedy.
When I see those links on other sites, I do find it to be useful information. I know who I would not hire.
Honestly, if an SEO or designer or hosting provider wanted to put a link on my site I would tell him "no" nicely. If they argued or pressed for it my consideration of his company would be concluded. The link is not necessary for attribution.
If an SEO or hosting company wanted to have their name at the bottom of my site without the link I would tell them how much it would cost to advertise there. The value of that advertising would probably exceed the value of the service that they provided.
If you go to a big brand site such as CNN, WSJ, Today, ESPN, you don't see links to SEOs, hosting or designers. They are not being billboards for their service providers.
My displeasure on this is extremely strong against SEOs and hosting providers. For designers I can understand why they ask. For a designer, if I am exceedingly pleased with what they have done I might list them on the "about us" page, where I mention a few people who have contributed to the content of the site. Why the designer? Because they improved what people see and that includes matching the design to my content or complimenting it.
I have different views when it comes to photographs, graphics, videos. I always name the creator of those content assets and often link to their website in the caption. Why? Because they are a content source and my visitors might want to see more of their work. It is similar to a reference link on a Wikipedia article. Those links are useful to the visitors. Even if I paid them a license fee, I mention them and usually link to them (the only exception is with a thumbnail, but that thumbnail always links to an article where their photo is prominent and with attribution and usually a link). I give them attribution because I want to help them. They usually have sites that are less visible than mine. And I want them to feel that the got back more than they gave.
My site is not about SEO or about hosting or design. So a link to those sites is not useful to my visitor, so it really should not be there.
-
We never place a link without the site owners permission.
-
Just to be clear, are you going to ask for the client's permission first?
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Links Identified in WMT not on Webpages
Hi, We're currently reviewing one of our clients backlinks in Google Webmaster Tools, Majestic & OSE as we can see many toxic links. However we cannot find the links on the webpages that are listed on Google WMT. We have searched through the website along with checking through the source code. Should we still disavow the domain? Thanks, Edd
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | tomcraig860 -
I'm seeing thousands of no-follow links on spam sites. Can you help figure it out?
I noticed that we are receiving thousands of links from many different sites that are obviously disguised as something else. The strange part is that some of them are legitimate sites when you go to the root. I would say 99% of the page titles read something like : 1 Hour Loan Approval No Credit Check Vermont, go cash advance - africanamericanadaa.com. Can someone please help me? Here are some of the URL's we are looking at: http://africanamericanadaa.com/genialt/100-dollar-loans-for-people-with-no-credit-colorado.html http://muratmakara.com/sickn/index.php?recipe-for-cone-06-crackle-glaze http://semtechblog.com/tacoa/index.php?chilis-blue-raspberry-margarita http://wesleygcook.com/rearc/guaranteed-personal-loans-oregon.html
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TicketCity0 -
Internal Links to Ecommerce Category Pages
Hello, I read a while back, and I can't find it now, that you want to add internal links to your main category pages. Does that still apply? If so, for a small site (100 products) what is recommended? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Does linking older posts help?
Asking a blogger to add an anchor text into their old post that relates to my niche. does that help with backlinks? does the quality of backlinks determine by how new the post is or the page rank determines all? for example a new post with lesser page rank vs a old post with higher page rank which one is better to put your link on?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andzon0 -
Website starts ranking on Google then always drops - Targeted for Australia but most traffic from U.S - Bounce Rate at 94.49% - HELP!
Hi everyone, Thank you for your time. During the past 8 months I have been working on this website which is a .com.au . I have fully optimised the website which is targeting Brisbane in Australia and I have setup everything (Sitemaps, Geo location on WMT, Fetched as Google etc..) However the website just does not want to rank at all. I know that the previous SEO company were not too good but since then I have disavowed all unnatural links, we have moved the hosting to a new company and the website content has been updated. Only recently the Website has started ranking for it's brand name (not even in top of Google) and whenever a keyword starts ranking above the Top 50 of Google it suddenly drops again. The other issues is that even if I have setup the website to target Australia the majority of traffic comes from the U.S. Last month out of the 127 Session - 85 from United States - 29 from Australia - 3 Brazil - 2 India - 2 Italy - 1 Canada etc... Because of this the website has a Bounce rate of 95%. If you would have any advice, tips or recommendations that I could do to try and fix this it would be much appreciated. I suppose we can consider this as some kind of penalisation - potentially due to the past work and issues that occurred before the business became our client but I am not sure what more I can do to stop the wrong traffic and improve the rankings. Thanks for your help. Lyam
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AlphaDigital20 -
I am tempted to purchase a listing on an industry specific website directory with high domain authority. Will that be frowned upon as buying links?
I am tempted to purchase a listing on an industry specific website directory (http://marketingresourcedirectory.ama.org/) with high domain authority. Will that be frowned upon as buying links?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SearchParty0 -
Site architecture change - +30,000 404's in GWT
So recently we decided to change the URL structure of our online e-commerce catalogue - to make it easier to maintain in the future. But since the change, we have (partially expected) +30K 404's in GWT - when we did the change, I was doing 301 redirects from our Apache server logs but it's just escalated. Should I be concerned of "plugging" these 404's, by either removing them via URL removal tool or carry on doing 301 redirections? It's quite labour intensive - no incoming links to most of these URL's, so is there any point? Thanks, Ben
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs20100 -
Thought on optimising the perfect keyword location link
My site works a bit like a directory, so say I have a page called "Ice Cream Vendors" - on that page I would talk a bit about Ice Cream Vendors, then I will have a list of Ice Cream Vendor Locations. My list of locations can be quite big depending on the product and the amount of locations they occur in - when you click a location, it goes to a page showing all "ICeCream Vendors" in that location. So Currently I will have a table on the page a bit like this: ICE CREAM VENDOR LOCATIONS
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | James77
New York
Miami
Las Vegas This is all perfectly nice, simple and usable - BUT it is not producing perfect keyword links - for perfect keyword links the list should be like this: ICE CREAM VENDOR LOCATIONS
New York Ice Cream Vendors
Miami Ice Cream Vendors
Las Vegas Ice Cream Vendors Now I have my perfect anchor links - BUT it looks rediculous and is NOT user friendly. So What do I do?
1/. Build it for users and not have perfect anchor links, and loose in SEO?
2/. Build a perfect SEO links and make it less usable and looking spammy? OR 3/. Deliver the search engine the perfect SEO links, and the user the userfriendly version? In this I mean I could do the following:
SE's (and screen readers I think would see):
ICE CREAM VENDOR LOCATIONS
New York Ice Cream Vendors
Miami Ice Cream Vendors
Las Vegas Ice Cream Vendors Users would See
ICE CREAM VENDOR LOCATIONS
New York
Miami
Las Vegas Now in my view I am doing nothing wrong - I am mearly giving the user the most userfriendly version and I am giving the SE more information on the link, that the user doesn't need. So - In my view I am doing something that is honest - but what are your thoughts?? Has anyone tried to do this? Thanks0