Footer Links for Design Shops - Do They Help or Hurt?
-
I work on SEO for a number of clients at our agency, including our in-house SEO for our own website. I use Open Site Explorer all the time to analyze my competition in the SERPs and try to gain links from this insight. However, I've noticed a number of agencies and design shops that place a link in the footer of websites they've designed and created. For example "Site design by ABC Agency (hyperlinked to the agency's home page). Or I've seen small logos or graphics that link to the designer's site and use the "alt tag" to get stronger anchor text. From a design perspective, I don't care for this, but as a SEO...I can see why.
We've designed a number of websites and have more in the pipeline, but have not used this tactic before. It seems like an irrelevant link from a content/user standpoint, however, it seems to work for a lot of agencies and design shops. Any input from the SEOmoz community would be great. Is it a short-lived strategy? Does it help or hurt your link-building and "rapport" with Google, Bing, Yahoo?
Thanks everyone.
-
author meta - no
footer link - yes
-
Now conversly to this. If you were auditing a client's website would you reccomend removal of an Author Meta Tag and Footer link...
-
EGOL - we could pretty much bet our lives on you being correct. A large corporate site would be crazy to hire freelancers ($$$). They surely have a staff of W2 employees or, at the very least, an outsource consisting of staff employees. Successful corporations are into "team spirit" motivationals and like direct contact and control of people collaborating on their public image.
-
I had an epphany on footer links. Since I specialize in business broker sites it dawned on me Ithere is a relevancy issue - business broker to web design is a mismatch.
What I did was create a couple of "business broker specialty" pages, then worded the anchor text accordingly. The pages quickly attained individual rank and I started getting more response forms.
In addition to creating relevancy I also let them know I know about their business. I generally do SEO as part of a site rebuild.
-
Cool, thanks again winlynxtp.
-
One last note here, you are speaking about publicly traded companies with Nike, Best Buy, etc... These companies have a dedicated staff that work on the site all the time. They are not going to put on the front page of their site, last updated by Robert Smith. I also agree about the fee, I usually deduct it from the cost of the site design similar to how construction companies give you a discount for putting a sign in your yard. You can also use the Author meta tag.
-
You don't see those footer links on sites for Nike, Medtronic, Best Buy, etc.
I agree. I think that some of these companies have in-house talent or they address the "signature links" before the design contract is awarded.
In my opinion, the designer is still a "winner" if he/she can post... "I designed Nike or BestBuy" in their personal portfolio.
When you think of the value that such a link would have (as on Nike), the designer should be willing to do the work for free and pay a monthly fee for the link to be displayed. (just taking the opposite perspective).
-
The "tagline" as you put it is not really a tagline but we will use it. It may not be seen by users but Google will see it.
-
Design is design, I guess you feel your work is not as important as an artist, not my problem. Someone doesn't want my links they don't get it but usually after design they want to brag of my work to their friends. But us younger folks use the internet for our reputation not the newpaper.
-
Great point. And that's why I reached out to the community on this one. Because we're an agency, we can frequently update our work portfolio on our website and blog, which if I'm doing my job, organic traffic from targeted keywords will bring visitors that might convert into new clients. Thanks for the reply and great recommendation!
-
Thanks EGOL. It's obvious as a way to build a lot of links quickly if a company is designing/programming a lot of websites. Also, and this is speculation, but it seems like a lot of design firms are not asking client permission for a link, and subtly add it to the bottom as if it's a standard. Nonetheless, we're a hybrid agency that does design and programming, as well as SEO, so it's warranted I suppose to "mark" our work, but at the same time it still seems like it can "cheapen" a website. You don't see those footer links on sites for Nike, Medtronic, Best Buy, etc.
Thanks again for the insight. Always curious to hear what other SEOmoz'rs think about this stuff. There's a lot of website design/dev in our future so I wanted to check with the community. Cheers!
-
If your design company site is ranking well you can get more value from good strong testimonials on your site than a signature line on site your customers may never find. Take the example that you do a fantastic job on a site to promote kid's books. Someone looking for a good designer for their speed boat site is more likely to read a testimonial on your site than see your tagline on the book site. You gain value by human viewers being able to read what others are saying about your work on a diverse range of sites.
If I am hiring a designer, I do not want one that has worked on a competitor's website so I would search google for designers not look at design by tag lines on competitor's sites.
It comes down to whether you want your two minutes of fame on every site you do or a valuable marketing resource such as testimonials.
-
Thanks for the feedback. It's definitely a fast way to build a lot of links if web design and/or programming is a company's capability. Just wanted to be sure these links weren't going to hurt my SEO. Cheers.
-
I can understand why some designers want to have a "signature" on their work. It is somewhat of a custom for an artist to sign his/her work and that custom seems to creep into web design. A lot of designers are really adamant about that link and do not want to give it up even if the website owner is willing to pay extra. In my opinion this is something that the designer and the client should agree upon before work begins.
I have a very different reaction when I see an SEO company link in the footer of a client site. I know exactly why they want that link.
Why should I hire an SEO who does that? Any SEO who is proud of his work should not be sucking the linkjuice out of his client's websites. He is being paid to do the opposite and do that job in a stealthy manner.
-
It is a backlink so yes, it is helpful, in the footer in my opinion very helpful. Then It started off as being helpful to add html links to the bottom of the page so when listed with Google, Google would include the pages in the search results, now called Sitelinks. This has evolved and if you use a CMS like Joomla or Wordpress can easily be distinguished without them. It is appropriate to allow the company working on your site to include designed by.... I will use it to boost the keyword I want. For example say I want to rank higher for Indianapolis Website Design over the next 3 months, I will start including it and link to the site design page of my site.
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
-
Internal Linking Conundrum
Hello I have a web site with a menu structure with three levels Top Level (Single Item) > First Level (Single Item) > Second Level (Multiple Items) The first level pages do not rank well. The top level and second level pages rank well. Search Console acknowledges 600 internal links to the top level. 600 to the second level. But only 100 to the first level. This is true across 6 top level items. It is not to do with page level links. It just isn't acknowledging all the links to the first level. Does anyone know why this might be? Thanks for any assistance you can give me.
Web Design | | Andrew-SEO0 -
Help with Schema.org on Ecommerce Products
I’m looking for ways of using schema.org with products that have pricing options. There appear to be two main problems 1) Whilst colour, width, height and depth are all catered for, size appears to be missing – how can we mark up products that are available in sizes that aren’t necessarily covered by width/height/depth (e.g. shoe size). Also, what if the product is available in different finishes – technically, these could not properly be described as colours so how could we mark them up? 2) There doesn’t seem to be any particularly good way of marking up pricing options that are displayed on the same product detail page. For e.g. if a pricing option table is used like this: | ID | Colour | Price 001-red | Red | £3.99 001-green | Green | £4.49 001-blue | Blue | £4.99 | I can mark up each row as an offer, and give each offer a price and sku or mpn, but then I can’t use itemprop=”color” to describe exactly what the option is. Would I just use itemprop=”name” in this case and abandon color altogether (even though it’s technically supposed to be describing the colour of the product and not the name of the offer)? I suppose another way I could approach it would be to mark up each row as an individual product, and assign each one an offer with the details as described above but then the containing page would effectively look like a separate product – which it isn’t. Any help or advice on this would be very much appreciated
Web Design | | paulbaguley0 -
Does having a Blog link in the top level navigation provide any better SEO value, or would having it in a footer or top navigation work just as good?
Trying to decide on whether placing a link to the blog in our top level navigation would have a better SEO value than just placing it in top or footer navigation. I have an ecommerce site.
Web Design | | RPD0 -
Wordpress Designer - Have you heard of Jay Hafling?
We are currently browsing around to have a new site built for us as we are not happy with the current one. I checked out webdevstudio and it looks like they build quality sites, but they told me they aren't taking on small projects like mine currently. So browsing around I found this designer from the Ukraine with a nice site and nice portfolio. I am wondering if anyone has worked with him, and maybe to get some opinions on his work? I don't want to make the wrong choice here.. What do you guys think? http://www.jayhafling.com
Web Design | | DemiGR1 -
Keyword help for a beginner
Hello Everyone! I have a few simple questions about picking/using the best keywords for my website. Just to give a little background on the company, we sell branded servers (IBM, HP, DELL) workstations, storage, and related hardware and software (memory, processors, hard drives, operating systems, management software, etc...) I'm trying to pick the keywords to use on the home page but have these questions: 1. This question is a little hard for me to explain, but we would like to show up in the search results whether a user types in: Dell server(s) or IBM server(s) or HP Workstation so for the title tag can we use: DELL, IBM, HP Servers, Workstations, Storage or we need to use DELL Servers, IBM Servers, Dell Workstations, IBM Workstations, etc... Basically what I'm asking is can we combine keywords in the title tag or we need to write them out (hope this make sense) if not let me know and I'll try provide a little more detail and few more examples. 2. This question might not fall under this category of topics and might have to start a new thread but here it goes. We are re-designing our site on a new eCommerce platform using x-cart shopping cart, its a very configurable and inexpensive shopping cart however one of the drawbacks is its speed. Most users of the x-cart shopping cart software report on average of 2-4 seconds page loads, which is kind of slow. even with some heavy optimization you get about 1.5 - 2.5 seconds page load. I've heard that if you want to be higher in Google's search results speed is a big plus, being in the 0.5 second range is a huge plus. I was thinking of creating a static html home page that would include some company info, content with relevant keywords, some links to main categories... (basically kind of copy the google.com page but with a little more text) Would that be a good idea to implement? Hope this question makes sense as well or stick with the default shopping cart home page and try to optimize it as best as possible? 3. We probably have about 10 - 15 short keyword phrases that we want to concentrate on, again they would be:
Web Design | | igor.pinchevskiy
DELL Servers, HP Servers, IBM, Servers
DELL Workstations, HP Workstations, IBM Workstations,
DELL Memory, HP Memory, IBM Memory
DELL Hard Drives, HP Hard Drives, IBM Hard Drives What is the maximum or recommended quantity of keyword phrases to try to include on the home page? Is it also recommended to maybe create a separate page for each keyword phrase? Does a home page get better ranking then another page on the server just because its a home page? Hope my questions aren't too dumb and make sense. I appreciate everyone who takes their time to read through and answer my questions or guide me in the right path. Thank you,
Igor Pinchevskiy0 -
Siloing and navigation menu linking
Still trying to understand siloing and how it relates to displaying links in the navigation menu. I'm working on optimizing a site for a lawyer friend. His site consists of 4 top level pages - index, attorney profile, practice areas, and contact. Then, there are 2 folders that contain all the 2nd-level pages for his 2 practice areas - personal injury and business litigation. The website in question is www(dot)comitzlaw(dot)com. From what I read about siloing before taking the 30-day SEOMoz trial (which I really like so far, by the way), I set the main (left hand) menu up as follows: The 4 top level pages only display the "collapsed" navigation menu, which only links to the index pages for personal injury and business litigation. Go anywhere in personal injury, and all pages link to the "expanded" personal injury navigation (links to auto accidents page, wrongful death, motorcycle accidents, etc.) but the "collapsed" business litigation section and vice versa for business litigation's links to personal injury. I did this because, as I understand, it keeps the practice area links on topic (like in a car sales example where you want a Ford section linking to Ford pages and Chevy pages linking to Chevy pages). Just wondering if anyone thinks I have this set up right. Wondering if the home page should display the "expanded" navigation menu instead or if all top level pages should show the expanded? Appreciate any thoughts on this. Thanks.
Web Design | | c2g0 -
Coding a WordPress shopping cart
I have searched high and low for a light, simple to use Wordpress shopping cart plugin which can use custom templates and work with the transporter and payment gateway i'd like. Unfortunately i haven't found anything. I am currently looking for an example, maybe a tutorial somewhere but can't seem to find anything online, all i can find are advertisements for existing plugins. Can anyone help my any further? I know it's not an SEO related question but i'm out of ideas.
Web Design | | ldestrooper0 -
Old links in Google, new website affecting SEO?
Hi Guys, I have launched my website in october and it has already been indexed by google. Now I'm going to launch my redesign which comes with a new structure, content, links, etc. So the question is, do I have to resubmit my website to google to get rid of old links? Onsite Explorer shows links to my forum which has been spammed with p* stuff which has been already indexed as well. The forum is off now. I want to use SEOmoz to track my new website but I guess this could be a hard thing as old links etc will be shown as well. Is there any tool to let Google know about my changes? Does it affect my SEO in any way? Thank you for your help. Nick
Web Design | | NickITW0