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.
Over Optimization & Footer Links for Crediting Web Design to a Company
-
With the recent updates to the algorithm having to do with link networks and over optimization it has got me to thinking about the footer links we add to each site that we build and do web design for linking back to ours. I could certainly see how Google could make the assumption that these are all on the same server, pointing back to one main site, and penalize us for that. Should we no=follow these links? They may say something like, "Website Designed By: Company Name". They do provide a valuable source to some extent of traffic to the site from people interested in our designs. Any thoughts?
-
These links are not editorial earned but I have mixed feelings about them, here's why:
I don't have a problem when a designer ads one text or image link with their brand name in the footer, as long as the client is happy with it. If you've designed an awesome site that link may act as lead gen.
However, I have noticed designers getting a bit crazy with this and adding multiple (2,3,4 more) keyword rich text links (web design, web development, web deigners location etc etc) in footers which I really do have a problem with as they are only there for one reason. It looks spammy on the client's site and may actually get their site penalised.
-
I just asked a similar question here :
(I didn't see this existing topic)
The advice I received was :
-
Use only your brand name in anchor text when linking from client websites
-
A single link from a clients home page is probably better than linking from every page.
-
-
Just found an interesting post in webmaster world that kinda answers how Google may feel about these typs of links.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4445558.htm
This is going to mess up a lot of Web Design firms if they start to enforce this.
-
Dan, thanks for getting involved in the discussion. It is funny that most design firms carry out this practice and I have never heard it discussed before. I will have to look into using a micro format for this as I had not thought about that before. I guess we will soon find out what role that plays in appears as part of a "link scheme" or not with the new update rolling out soon. Thanks again.
-
I have always been curious as to how the SE's treat this. Yes, it is probably not a good idea if you are hosted on the same server as the rest of your client's websites, but looking at the current proposed changes as to what may possibly be a penalty, I think that it wouldn't matter much where they are hosted.
I am really interested if anyone has any suggestions or thoughts on a way to give a creative credit to the organization that created the design or creative work i.e) "website design by company " using a micro format or HTML tag.
If the word coming down the pipe is a concentration on natural optimization, then calling a brown dog, a brown dog so to speak by using the proper citation would never be spammy. So linking to your website with "website design by company" shouldn't be penalized, nor should it require a no-follow if it is citing the creative origin, right? Am I making sense, it would be no different than an Author citation.
Reading on this topic today made me think about this, so what would be the most appropriate, a micro-format or some other tag? IDK, but if I come to a conclusion, you will be the first to know.
-
In that case, I would not sweat over it. If you think about it, companies can't control who links to them. Imagine all those Wordpress, Blogspot Blogs, which have a sitewide blogroll. If a mommy blogger created a blog 5 years ago and linked to Disney.com for example, and now she does not even remember that she created a blog...what can Disney.com do about it and they are all from username.wordpress.com kind of URLs, so all from the same IP.
Anyways, long story short, all kinds of links...add up to become a natural link profile. For Web Design companies, this is fairly common in my opinion and good news is that you are using brand as a keyword, so I don't think there's something to be worried about. Going forward, if I were you, I would nofollow the links. But leave the old ones as is unless there's an issue in which case you could add nofollow to those existing links as well.
-
1. Yes
2. No, they only link to our main web design/seo site. Not us to them except in some cases where we have a case study for example.
3.Not as many as we would like
But to honestly answer your question I would say say our clients make up 1/2 of our link profile and many of them are in the global footer so are sitewide.4. Probably 20 sites right now
We are only using branded company name in anchor text. Thanks for the feedback.
-
I would ask you the following questions:
- Are all the client sites on the same server ?
- Do you have a clients page where you link back to each of your clients ?
- How does your link profile look ? Do you have lots of other links ?
- How many client sites are we talking ? 10/20/50/500/1000 ? And then how would you compare them to the total links you have ?
If your link profile is mostly natural, I wouldn't worry about it that much. But going forward you could nofollow them. Also, what's the anchor text in your links ? Your Company Name or Website Designed ? Do more of Brand Name, combined with Anchor Text. So all sorts of variations. Do not make them consistent.
I hope that 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
-
Reducing cumulative layout shift for responsive images - core web vitals
In preparation for Core Web Vitals becoming a ranking factor in May 2021, we are making efforts to reduce our Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) on pages where the shift is being caused by images loading. The general recommendation is to specify both height and width attributes in the html, in addition to the CSS formatting which is applied when the images load. However, this is problematic in situations where responsive images are being used with different aspect ratios for mobile vs desktop. And where a CMS is being used to manage the pages with images, where width and height may change each time new images are used, as well as aspect ratios for the mobile and desktop versions of those. So, I'm posting this inquiry here to see what kinds of approaches others are taking to reduce CLS in these situations (where responsive images are used, with differing aspect ratios for desktop and mobile, and where a CMS allows the business users to utilize any dimension of images they desire).
Web Design | | seoelevated3 -
Using Button Links vs Sidebar Menu
I have a services page with a lot of rich text and a slideshow of images. Currently, I am using a column of buttons to various services, and am wondering if a sidebar menu would be more effective for Google to crawl and rank?
Web Design | | cinchmedia0 -
Https pages indexed but all web pages are http - please can you offer some help?
Dear Moz Community, Please could you see what you think and offer some definite steps or advice.. I contacted the host provider and his initial thought was that WordPress was causing the https problem ?: eg when an https version of a page is called, things like videos and media don't always show up. A SSL certificate that is attached to a website, can allow pages to load over https. The host said that there is no active configured SSL it's just waiting as part of the hosting package just in case, but I found that the SSL certificate is still showing up during a crawl.It's important to eliminate the https problem before external backlinks link to any of the unwanted https pages that are currently indexed. Luckily I haven't started any intense backlinking work yet, and any links I have posted in search land have all been http version.I checked a few more url's to see if it’s necessary to create a permanent redirect from https to http. For example, I tried requesting domain.co.uk using the https:// and the https:// page loaded instead of redirecting automatically to http prefix version. I know that if I am automatically redirected to the http:// version of the page, then that is the way it should be. Search engines and visitors will stay on the http version of the site and not get lost anywhere in https. This also helps to eliminate duplicate content and to preserve link juice. What are your thoughts regarding that?As I understand it, most server configurations should redirect by default when https isn’t configured, and from my experience I’ve seen cases where pages requested via https return the default server page, a 404 error, or duplicate content. So I'm confused as to where to take this.One suggestion would be to disable all https since there is no need to have any traces to SSL when the site is even crawled ?. I don't want to enable https in the htaccess only to then create a https to http rewrite rule; https shouldn't even be a crawlable function of the site at all.RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTPS} offor to disable the SSL completely for now until it becomes a necessity for the website.I would really welcome your thoughts as I'm really stuck as to what to do for the best, short term and long term.Kind Regards
Web Design | | SEOguy10 -
Internal Linking: What is the best practice for pages not included in Nav bar?
I never quite understood why internal linking was such a big deal for SEO, but now I'm having second thoughts and perhaps understanding it more. I always thought since most websites have a navigation feature--usually the menu bar located at the top and often another one in the footer--that internal navigation was usually already built in to most websites and therefore, a silly topic to make a fuss over; however, I may be the silly one after all. I am now creating pages that are not included in the navigation so.... What is the best practice for this? If I am creating say, pages for certain locations and those location pages begin to number in the hundreds, it makes my navigation bar a little too cumbersome to have all those pages in a drop down menu. So I made a Locations page and just link to all those pages from that page (and from nowhere else). But now I'm wondering if this could be a bad internal linking practice and perhaps hurt my online visibility as an SEO ranking factor. Is this a crawl problem? And if so, is there a better option that provides a good visitor experience while appeasing the search engines.
Web Design | | Dino640 -
Can external links in a menu attract a penalty?
We have some instances of external links (i.e. pointing to another domain) in site menus. Although there are legitimate reasons (e.g. linking to a news archive kept on a separate domain) I understand this can be considered bad from a usability perspective. This begs the question - is this bad for SEO? With the recent panda changes we've seen certain issues which were previously "only" about usability attract SEO penalties, but I can't find any references to this example. Anyone have thoughts / experience?
Web Design | | SOS_Children0 -
ECWID How to fix Duplicate page content and external link issue
I am working on a site that has a HUGE number of duplicate pages due to ECWID ecommerce platform. The site is built with Joomla! How can I rectify this situation? The pages also show up as "external " links on crawls... Is it the ECWID platform? I have never worked on a site that uses this. Here is an example of a page with the issue (there are 6280 issues) URL: http://www.metroboltmi.com/shop-spare-parts?Itemid=218&option=com_rokecwid&view=ecwid&ecwid_category_id=3560081
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
White Text / Black Background & SEO Impact
Does anyone know of any testing / studies with evidence that Google prefers dark text on a light background vs. light text on a dark background? I have a website that currently has light text on a black background, and really like the way it looks, but am concerned that the style may be hurting SEO. Moreover, redesigning something inverse with the same quality would be a large project and fairly costly, so I'd like to make sure the benefit will really be worth the cost before moving forward.
Web Design | | Bromtec0 -
Mozcon London 2010: Top 10 tips - Design for SEO PPT Not Available for Download!
Hi - title says it all really! Just watched the video and throughout it they refer to the wireframes/site examples being available via the ppt download. However, even as a PRO member having purchased the DVD bundle I cannot find a link to download the presentation. Can anyone help please? Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | BlakMajik0
