Adding web designer credits to properties I create
-
I’m a web designer and I add a “design by studio 35 “ link on the footer of all the web sites I design. By doing so, every page on a website links to me, since the sites I build can have anywhere from 10 to 100 pages (wordpress and shopify).
While this does on occasion get me clients and inquiries, is this affecting the SEO to my site in a good, or in a bad way? Non of the sites are spammy, but many of them have low domain authority since they are typical small businesses and organizations and do no SEO efforts.
Would it be better to add a "site credits" link to a page within a client site, and there add a bit of info and link out? That way, there is only 1 link back to my site?
-
Reason is that there is a real, legitimate value as a developer to have my credit there for users that see the site and would like inquire about having design a similar site. I'm just looking for a way though that this won't affect my own site negatively.
I'm thinking either 1. Do a NoFollow link directly to the site, or 2. Point the link to an internal page on the client site, and from there point to my own site.
-
May be not ignored, but certainly do not pass any search engine ranking value.
-
Hi Dean. What about if those footer links and those site-wide links are no follow? Won't they just be ignored by google?
-
The Rules of Link Building - Whiteboard Friday posted on April 4th, 2014 which advises against this:
Don't link externally in the footer
A couple of other rules that I see people violate all the time that Google has made painfully clear in the past few months: Don't link externally in the footer. Just don't. I'm not going to go into the reasons. Just don't do that.And
Avoid site-wide links
By the same token, except for navigation, avoid site-wide links. This is something that we've known for years. If someone links to you externally, site-wide, in the side bar, that's ripe for Penguin-style links. -
Add the links if you feel you will get referral business from it, but not for SEO value. The link(s) you do add, no follow them. Duane Forrester from Bing stated in a blog post "You want links to surprise you. You should never know in advance a link is coming, or where it’s coming from."
http://www.bing.com/blogs/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2014/05/09/10-seo-myths-reviewed.aspx
This statement was given the general nod by Matt Cutts of Google
https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/466449897261367296
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-advance-links-18549.html
Finally, I would ask, can you do this in a way that is also beneficial to your client? Is the client getting a discount? Is there a way you can talk about the services this client provides on your site? Can the two of you as local businesses provide additional information to your visitors (more than just the link) that could turn visitors into customers?
Good luck!
-
Funny I just looked this up today trying to help someone here. Basically, you're adding a backlink to your site and I can't find any information to get you a solid answer. In general, you need to consider any link's relevance, reputation, and trust. so if a backlink isn't relevant to the site, will it get flagged as an ad? Might webmaster backlinks be considered paid links?
I did find this Matt Cutts video on footer links https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0fgh5RIHdE and it seems Google can weigh footer links and editorial links differently, and I think that's your answer. But I also came across this article http://blog.ahrefs.com/matt-cutts-says-google-cracking-bloggers-bribed-links/ that's says Google is basically cracking down on the kind of links you're describing.
But at the end of the day, are you getting a significant CTR from these links? If that's the case, nofollow those links and perhaps Google might actually counts them more. Who really knows?
-
I struggle with this too, on the one hand we get referral business from these links but on wmt it shows some sites may have 2000 pages and that can't look good in a search engines eyes. Im cleaning my site up now and in web master tools i had so many pages linking to me from sites that i have done over the years and i think it might be hurting me. I recently started putting no follow links on a lot of the sites that i have built so that potential clients can get to my site but search engines won't crawl them. Hope this helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Footer backlink for/to Web Design Agency
I read some old (10+ years) information on whether footer backlinks from the websites that design agencies build are seen as spammy and potentially cause a negative effect. We have over 150 websites that we have built over the last few years, all with sitewide footer backlinks back to our homepage (designed and managed by COMPANY NAME). Semrush flags some of the links as potential spammy links. What are the current thoughts on this type of footer backlink? Are we better to have 1 dofollow backlink and the rest of the website nofollow from each domain?
Link Building | | MultiAdE1 -
Creating a subdomain or subdirectory for each major city for our main website...
If our website is abc.com I am wanting to create a subdomain or subdirectory for each major city for SEO targeting purposes. But I want each domain to go to our see the same content from the main website abc.com. What's the best way to accomplish this? Duplicating our main page over and over sounds terrible , especially when trying to make changes down the road. Should we create an alias for each location? example.. abc.com/new-york, abc.com-chicago, etc...? If we go that route how does google acknowledge that? Would that mess up our SEO or help? Thanks!
Link Building | | michaelfisk0 -
What to do with expired domains waiting to create web site
Hi users MOZ:
Link Building | | NachoRetta
I bought a couple of expired domains to create a private blog network but I can't create the sites yet. While i prepare the sites, it is good idea to do a 301 redirect with them?1 -
Does Website Design Matter?
I've got a new site officially launching next month (just waiting on a few inner page designs to be finished up). But if I'm looking to get a head start on backlinks, would it be okay to start publishing content now on one of the default WordPress themes? And then start publishing guest posts immediately to get backlinks? Or would Google look at the site as not being unique?
Link Building | | JABacchetta0 -
Adding NOFOLLOW to all external links, is this a good idea?
In the setting of a news site, with articles that often link to one or more outside sources, is it a good idea to rel="nofollow" all external links? Would this hurt link-building prospects? Of course, internal links would keep on passing link juice back and forth, but is there real harm in following external links? These would be links our writers and editors created themselves to reputable sources, blogs, etc.
Link Building | | VoxxiVoxxi0 -
Which are the best directory submission sites: UBL.org, localeeze.com, web-listings.net, other?
Manual sumbissions are a PAIN IN THE B, why good directory submission management sites are great. However, which ones are the best ones?
Link Building | | yvonneq0 -
SEOs and web developers frequently leave links to their site in the footer of their clients' sites. Does this negatively impact the site with the links?
Does this provide any SEO value to the receiving site? Has anyone experienced problems doing this?
Link Building | | KatMouse2 -
I don't know if i should post my articles to other forums or sharing sites to create back links?
All the articles on my blog are written on my own. I write about 5 ones per month. I don't know if i should post my articles to other forums or sharing sites to create back links? I have heard that it may cause adverse effect because my blog will be crawled more slowly than those forums, so Google will consider the articles on my blog (as) copies. Is that right?
Link Building | | tranduchieu0