Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Digital Marketing
    3. Web Design
    4. Footer backlinks for sites I've developed

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Footer backlinks for sites I've developed

    Web Design
    6
    10
    2796
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • sanchez1960
      sanchez1960 last edited by

      I link back to my website via my company name on the footers of sites I develop.  Lately I've been changing this to my keyword and mixing and matching.  This has been done for new sites I create and old sites

      I've not seen any benefit so far after a couple of months.

      Most my clients are hosted on the same server as my main site that it links back to.

      1. Is this a bad idea to link back on the same IP?
      2. Is footer backlinks to the main developer going to annoy Google?
      3. Should I change my main site's server, will it help?

      All my competitors seem to do it and as far as I can tell they seem to get better results than I do.  Because I'm now changing them the reason I see no benefit?

      Thanks

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • AnthonyMangia
        AnthonyMangia last edited by

        Will it cause harm?  Not likely.  If Google suspects the links aren't kosher, it will probably just ignore (or "devalue") the links.

        As to whether it is a shady or manipulative practice - debatable.  From my perspective, I don't quite see how it is all that different from a company linking to its partners, suppliers, or customers.  The link represents a business relationship, and that relationship has value.  If I have a client in the position to get these kinds of links, for me it's a no brainer - get 'em.  At the very worst, they have no impact SEO-wise, but help with branding and referral traffic.  Google's perspective may differ.

        As to why the practice might not be working out so well for you - do you run linkbuilding campaigns for the websites you develop?  Does anybody?  Do many of the websites share a C class address?

        A bunch of links from websites with weak backlink profiles or the same C class addresses won't take you very far.

        BONUS - a few linkbuilding tactics guaranteed to work:

        • Submitting your website to high quality, relevant directories
        • Running a guest blogging campaign on a number of influential web design blogs
        • Creating TRULY engaging and unique content and promote it via social media
        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • RyanKent
          RyanKent @RyanKent last edited by

          @EGOL, I wholeheartedly agree. If it is an expectation, it should be shared in advance with the quote.

          @Kiran, there is not necessarily anything to do other then have your expectations set these links offer little if any value.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • kiranbajpe
            kiranbajpe @RyanKent last edited by

            What will best solution in this case. i have 400 link back from same IP. many from footer

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • GCSMasone
              GCSMasone @RyanKent last edited by

              I think that if done in a large scale these could provide a bit of value for a website if you could do it to a scale as GoDaddy recently has. Otherwise it is generally not going to add much value.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • EGOL
                EGOL @RyanKent last edited by

                Thanks!

                That's why designer/developer links will never appear in the footer of any of my sites.

                If the designer/developer expects these links it should be part of the discussion before any design contract is written... and they should feel free to quote a higher priced option for the work being done without the expectation of a link in the footer.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • RyanKent
                  RyanKent @EGOL last edited by

                  Under anything remotely normal, it is highly unlikely a search engine would consider a "website developed by EGOL Design" as a paid link. If a site owner tried a footer of "[website development], [website design], [graphic artwork], [seo] and other work performed by ABC Enterprises" where each term in brackets was a link, that clearly steps to the spammy side.

                  Even then I wouldn't necessarily call it paid links, but manipulative links which falls into the same category.

                  EGOL GCSMasone kiranbajpe RyanKent 4 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • EGOL
                    EGOL last edited by

                    Do you think that keyword links in the footer of a site might look like paid links?

                    RyanKent 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • kiranbajpe
                      kiranbajpe last edited by

                      Can we have keyword at footer to link back to our site devolved.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • RyanKent
                        RyanKent last edited by

                        It is a common practice for a site's developer to provide a self-promoting footer link in the site's they develop. There is no harm in doing so. You should not expect any noticeable value from the link either.

                        The entire concept of a valued link is an "independent vote". More specifically, it is a natural link which a user chose to provide. Links from sites you develop or host on your server are not chosen by the site owner. You choose to place the link. You could argue the site owner could choose to opt-out, but that is a another matter.

                        Google offers very low value to links in footers. Google also offers a lower value to site-wide links. Google also devalues links from sites on the same server. The bottom line is these links are not earned and you should not expect any value from search engines for them. If you build a high quality site then adding a footer link may occasionally earn your site a visit from someone interested in having their site developed. That needs to be enough for you.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                        • 1 / 1
                        • First post
                          Last post

                        Got a burning SEO question?

                        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                        Start my free trial


                        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.

                        • See all categories

                        Related Questions

                        • Kdruckenbrod

                          Payment Options in Footer

                          Hi Moz Community. I'm currently working on cleaning up a website footer on an e-commerce site. I was curious to find out if including payment options is important? Either text or image icons. Including Visa, AMEX etc. Are there benefits of displaying them? Image attached. Thanks vcdoL

                          Web Design | | Kdruckenbrod
                          0
                        • Myles92

                          Is having a site map page necessary?

                          Hello all! So I know having a sitemap XML file is important to include in your robots.txt file.  I also know it is important to submit your XML sitemap to Google and Bing.  However, I am wondering if it is beneficial for your site's SEO value to have a sitemap page displayed on your website? Or is this just a redundant action if you have already done the above two actions with your XML sitemap? Thanks in advance!

                          Web Design | | Myles92
                          0
                        • BearPaw88

                          Is it against google guidelines to use third party review sites as well as have reviews on my site marked up with schema?

                          So, i look after a site for my family business. We have teamed up with the third party site TrustPilot because we like the way it enables us to send out reviews to our customers directly from our system. It's been going great and some of the reviews have been brilliant. I have used a couple of these reviews on our site and marked them up with: REVIEW CONTENT We work in the service industry and so one of the problems we have found is that getting our customers to actually go online and leave a review. They normally just leave their comments on a job sheet that the workers have signed when they leave. So I have created a page on our site where we post some of the reviews the guys receive too. I have used the following: REVIEW TITLE REVIEW Written by: CUSTOMER NAME Type of Service:House Removal Date published: DATE PUBLISHED 10 / 10 stars I was just wondering I was told that this could be against googles guidelines and as i've seen a bit of a drop in our rankings in the last week or so i'm a little concerned. Is this getting me penalised? Should I not use my reviews referencing the ones on trust pilot and should i not have my own reviews page with rich snippets?

                          Web Design | | BearPaw88
                          1
                        • DRSearchEngOpt

                          Best way to indicate multiple Lang/Locales for a site in the sitemap

                          So here is a question that may be obvious but wondering if there is some nuance here that I may be missing. Question:  Consider an ecommerce site that has multiple sites around the world but are all variations of the same thing just in different languages.  Now lets say some of these exist on just a normal .com page while others exist on different ccTLD's.  When you build out the XML Sitemap for these sites, especially the ones on the other ccTLD's, we want to ensure that using <loc>http://www.example.co.uk/en_GB/"</loc> <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
                          hreflang="en-AU"
                          href="http://www.example.com.AU/en_AU/"
                          />
                          <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
                          hreflang="en-NZ"
                          href="http://www.example.co.NZ/en_NZ/"
                          /> Would be the correct way of doing this.  I know I have to change this for each different ccTLD but it just looks weird when you start putting about 10-15 different language locale variations as alternate links.  I guess I am just looking for a bit of re-affirmation I am doing this right.</xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br> Thanks!

                          Web Design | | DRSearchEngOpt
                          0
                        • Robertnweil1

                          Having a second homepage for a site would affect my SEO?

                          Hello guys, One of our clients is planning to have a new landing page for any users hitting the site for the first time. (returning users will still see the current homepage based on cookies ... in other words, the site would technically have 2 home pages). According to this client, they are planning to do something like this: https://www.websitename.com/ (for returning visitors) https://www.websitename.com/newuser (for first time visitors) Our instinct is that is not great to have 2 home pages (that would affect the SEO campaign we are managing for this company) and we are not sure how to handle this. That's why we would appreciate your opinion regarding this topic: From an SEO perspective, do you think this is a good idea? If not, what would you guys do differentiate first-time visitors vs returning visitors without affecting SEO? Maybe just a pop-up? Thanks in advance for your help !

                          Web Design | | Robertnweil1
                          0
                        • awalker84

                          Need to rebuild client's flash website

                          I am working with their web designer and need to figure out a way to rebuild their site which is currently all in flash. I was wondering if there was a way to do this without spending a ton of time in completely re-doing the site from scratch.

                          Web Design | | awalker84
                          0
                        • iAnalyst.com

                          Custom URL's with Bigcommerce Issue (Is it worth it?)

                          We're building out a store in Bigcommerce, who for all intensive purposes is perfect for SEO besides the fact that you can not change the URL's to be custom. My question is, does this kill the SEO value of bigcommerce, despite everything else being great? So for example the URL's for a category page would be something like this www.mysite.com/categories/keyword and the product URL's are pulled in by product name, so product URL's could be something like www.mysite.com/products/Product-Description-Long-223.html (notice the words will be capitalized and their is no way to remove the trailing .html) I could go with Interspire (the liscenced version of Bigcommerce) or Magento so I can custom edit this stuff. But then its a lot more work for my employee's on the buildout.

                          Web Design | | iAnalyst.com
                          0
                        • eseyo

                          Site-wide footer links or single "website credits" page?

                          I see that you have already answered this question before back in 2007 (http://www.seomoz.org/qa/view/2163), but wanted to ask your current opinion on the same question: Should I add a site-wide footer link to my client websites pointing to my website, or should I create a "website credits" page on my clients site, add this to the footer and then link from within this page out to my website?

                          Web Design | | eseyo
                          0

                        Get started with Moz Pro!

                        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                        Start my free trial
                        Products
                        • Moz Pro
                        • Moz Local
                        • Moz API
                        • Moz Data
                        • STAT
                        • Product Updates
                        Moz Solutions
                        • SMB Solutions
                        • Agency Solutions
                        • Enterprise Solutions
                        Free SEO Tools
                        • Domain Authority Checker
                        • Link Explorer
                        • Keyword Explorer
                        • Competitive Research
                        • Brand Authority Checker
                        • Local Citation Checker
                        • MozBar Extension
                        • MozCast
                        Resources
                        • Blog
                        • SEO Learning Center
                        • Help Hub
                        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                        • How-to Guides
                        • Moz Academy
                        • API Docs
                        About Moz
                        • About
                        • Team
                        • Careers
                        • Contact
                        Why Moz
                        • Case Studies
                        • Testimonials
                        Get Involved
                        • Become an Affiliate
                        • MozCon
                        • Webinars
                        • Practical Marketer Series
                        • MozPod
                        Connect with us

                        Contact the Help team

                        Join our newsletter
                        Moz logo
                        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                        • Accessibility
                        • Terms of Use
                        • Privacy

                        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.