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
-
Can I create forum backlinks for a "digital marketing agency" website?
I am working on a "digital marketing service" website. I want to create forum backlinks. Can I create forum backlinks for this type of website? If yes, then what is the possible strategy.
Link Building | | jamesfin123
Looking for an expert guide.0 -
Would a Web Cam Cause Link Spam?
We posted a streaming video cam we own of a popular surf break in Capitola (foxxr.com/cam) and it's getting picked up by web cam directories. We have quite a bit of traffic from these cam directories, so we posted a site audit tool in on that page to generate some leads. Our website is about internet marketing. Our concern is about irrelevant link sources appearing spammy to Google. Would a web cam link do more harm than good in this case?
Link Building | | bchilders220 -
Partnerships web pages and optimization- dangers and solutions?
My boss is in the process of building lot of new partnerships. The goal is to increase the number of mutual referrals. These are businesses that are not in the same industry, but have the same clients, so there is no competition. He wants a separate Partners category, landing page and a subpage for each partner. On each partner page, he wants a link pointing back to the partner company, along with some information about that particular business. In exchange, our partners would do the same- have a page dedicated to us with information and a link to our website.
Link Building | | SCLTeamShip
By the way, this is not an affiliate program, just referral exchange program. I am worried about appearing like a link farm. Should I be?
From what I see, most partners of other companies are all listed on one page. My boss says others do this without any problems, but he is not an SEO person. What are the dangers of doing it the way my boss wants?
What is the safest way to list business partners on our website while trying to accomplish what I have been asked (or as closely as possible)?No follow links, maybe? What about the metas and titles? NoIndex/NoFollow pages? (my boss wants these pages to be indexed). Your input is greatly appreciated.0 -
Too many links in my blog post created by comments. Should I worry?
Every year, we do a popular "Favourite pictures of the year" contest where people vote on the best picture (i.e: their mate's) in order to win something. But I just found that I'm going way over the "Too many links" limit and I think it's because of all the comments. 1. Is it a problem 2. Is there a way to de-activate the links? Thank you! 🙂 Ioan
Link Building | | IoanSaid0 -
Submitting my URL on web/business/service directories
Does it make sense to submit a business URL in as many relevant web/business directories as possible when kicking off a link building campaign? Submitting a free listing is obviously better than nothing, but when does it make sense to pay extra for a premium listing profile on some of these directories? There are just so many and a lot of them appear spammy, even though some of my competitors are getting traffic from them. Any advice on this would be great!
Link Building | | TheSquareFoot1 -
Creating profiles just to get a link is black hat?
Hi, i have a competitor that is creating profiles in sites that passes ranks in links and putting some links with good anchor text in the bio field. This can be considered a black hat seo? This competitor is getting good rank up with these pratices and i dont know if i can use these same sites too. link to profile: http://interact.webstandards.org/member/89166/ There are a lot of more sites with profiles with no content and just a link to the site. Thanks in advance, Denis
Link Building | | de.tierno1 -
Where to start on building links for a news website? Should I focus on promoting individual articles or create linkbait and create friends with influencial bloggers/editors/ and news websites in the same niche?
Where to start on building links for a news website? Should I focus on promoting individual articles or create linkbait and create friends with influential blogger/editors/ and news websites in the same niche?
Link Building | | purch0 -
Wich are the best IBL analysis tools on the web?
I know and use very often SEOmoz OSE. My question is about non-SEOmoz tools wich can detect a specific domain backlinks and all kind of parameters especially the IP of the backlinks. So: what do you use/recommend?
Link Building | | AndrewStarlike0