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?
-
Does this provide any SEO value to the receiving site?
No
Has anyone experienced problems doing this?
There are not any problems that can arise from this issue unless the target site which belongs to the SEO receives a penalty. If you stick with SEOs whom use only white hat techniques this should never be a problem.
Does this negatively impact the site with the links?
No. If you want to really look at this topic under a microscope then a very small amount of PR would flow from your site to the SEO's site. How small? If your site had 100 links per page and the PR flowed evenly to all links then we are talking about 1%. Google has inferred they devalue footer links so most likely it is a fraction of one percent.
If the SEO is doing their job well and you are pleased with their performance, I would suggest leaving the link. If you are unhappy with the SEO's performance and would not recommend their services, remove the link.
Personally, the link is something I discuss with clients upfront. I inform them exactly the words I shared in the above paragraph. If you are happy with me, leave the link and otherwise remove it.
-
I think it is a strategy which has been around pretty much since SEO started, I have seen this done for soo many years say the last 12.
I saw recently for a very strong term a site was over taken by a site that has 1/4 the total links of the top site, reason been the top site has say 1000+ and they place site wide footer links for a term on all these clients website.
It is obvious Google is aware of this practice and is de-value these types of links.
It is good for the company but I guess because they provide free advertising and also links back to their main website.
But it seems to hold some value, overall the best links are within content, near the top of the page on authority websites.
-
Hi
I believe that this practice is at best a little old hat and at worst has a negative effect on the client's site. On a homepage there will be links to deeper pages eg brands, categories, etc. It is through the homepage that juice will flow to these pages. If there are unnecessary outbound links on the homepage then this juice will be diluted, if only by a little. As the objective of an SEO is to optimise the clients page they really shouldn't post footer links. If they insist? then they should be no follow.
-
I have just had a look at the search results for the query "web design sheffield" which ranks as 48% keyword difficulty using the keyword difficulty tool.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=web+design+sheffield
The No 2 results evoluted.net appears to have built most of it's links through footer links which suggests it does have value for SEO purposes.
I guess the concern is that the clients sites content is likely to be completely unrelated to the developers sites content, however, it is a legitimate relationship and the developer is simply being credited for their good work.
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
-
Would it be a valid "link building' strategy to pay youtube video owners, to link to our company website in the decription of a certain video. ( For popular video's that are relevant )
I was wondering if it would it be a valid "link building' strategy to pay / work out a deal with youtube video owners, to link to our company website in the decription of a certain video they posted? ( For popular video's that are relevant to our business. ) Anyone have any thoughts on this? Thanks in advance! Steven
Link Building | | RockyMountainFlyboard0 -
Accidentally generated navigation links that point to American site from Australian site.
Somehow we ended up getting hundreds-of-thousands of links coming from our .au (Australia site) to our .com (America site). We believe that something happened during a change that turned a handful of our example.com.au navigational and footer links into back links pointing to example.com and sub-domains of the American version. We are currently fixing this, but we are wondering if this could potentially be problematic in terms of a penguin penalty due to an unnatural linking campaign or back link scheme. Could this error create major problems for us in the near future if we have corrected the issue? Your thoughts are welcome! Thanks!
Link Building | | tdawson090 -
My best links not showing in Open Site Explorer
Why is it that OSE does not display my strongest backlinks, including those from Wikipedia, a legitamite .edu, Squidoo, etc.? Some of those links have been live for a long time, and some (not all) are "dofollow". Impossible to do a thorough backlink analysis in this situation.
Link Building | | veezer0 -
Is a no-follow link/sponsored link a good editorial link?
Ok maybe this is a dumb question. I really need some better, more quality backlinks pointing to my site. There is a site that has domain authority of 72, page rank 5 that is offering me a sponsored blog post. Do sponsored posts count as a good editorial link? Also what if they are no-follow (and how would I find out ahead of time), does that still give me link juice?
Link Building | | tutugirl0 -
Should I work on links to a specific page or site in general?
Hi Guys, I'm trying to have my page rank better for "sell my car Houston". I'm about to start working on getting links to our site and my question is should I work on getting links to that specific page or would it be OK to just get links to the home page (same seo effect)? Specific page: http://www.motorsonwheels.com/pages/sell-my-car-in-houston-tx Home page: http://www.motorsonwheels.com Thanks! -Nash
Link Building | | nkabbara0 -
Is it worth it to link to sites that link to you in guest posts?
Suppose you published a guest post on a quality site and you link to a previous guest post you have written for another site (which links to you). In theory you could send link juice to the page that links to you for a second order effect. Has anyone seen results from this tactic?
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
How good is a backlink that's in the footer
Hello, The strongest site in our industry (according to domain authority and excluding wikipedia) said that they would put a sitewide link to us in their footer. We're good friends with them. It would be right next to the copyright. Our site is nlpca (dot) com The partner site is nlpu (dot) com The link will say something like "More NLP Training" with the "NLP" as the link. We're targeting the keyword "NLP" How much will this move us up for the keyword "NLP"? Right now we're on the 3rd page for that term. I also want to make sure that it's a white hat move. Thanks!
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
Linkbuilding to development site
We're creating a new website for a client, and we have already started link building to the pages, including some deep landing pages. Currently the site is blocked from being indexed - we're just concerned that there may be issues when we launch the site as there will be a lot of links pointing towards the pages from day 1. Are we ok to continue link building?
Link Building | | aarondicks1