Footer Back Links Question "Site by built by"
-
Hi all
I design and develop websites for clients within the UK. With each website I build, I always add a link to the footer of the website which links back to my website.
I have always used the link anchor text "Site By Jump" but then decided to try to use the link anchor text to our benefit by changing the links across all of our portfolio of sites to be:
"Graphic Design by Jump"
or
"Web Design by Jump"In the hope that this helped us rank better for those keyword phrases.
Now something occurred to me the day. Most of the websites I build have no relevance to the content on our website. For example, I could build a website for Baby Food and add a backlink to our homepage which doesn't even mention the words "baby food".
In some cases, the websites can have thousands of pages, each with this footer link appearing at the bottom of each page.
My question is, could these backlinks potentially be seen as black hat or spam to a search engine? I.e. thousands of backlinks from websites that have no relevance in terms of content all linking back to my homepage?
Thank you for reading and any advice would be greatly appreciated.
-
We have taken the view that we will leave our "site by" links alone, we are ranking well for key phrases and the danger being that changing these links will affect it.
That said, we have removed links from some client websites with poor DA and PR as a precaution and it doesn't seem to have done us any harm, in fact i think it may have improved SERPs on a few keywords, but a little early to say for sure.
-
And if we only knew what that tipping point was!
Thanks for the advice.
-
Sure, it's a tough decision as you never know how close you are to a penalty unfortunately.
I wouldn't go about changing the existing links on clients sites if you'r still ranking for these terms now but keep this in mind for any new links you acquire. Maybe link with just your brand name for most of them and then throw in the odd anchor text variation every now and then. You just need to avoid a tipping point where your profile starts to look suspicious.
-
Thanks for the advice Maximise.
The only issue with that is that we know from our analytics that visitors do actually find us by searching for some of the exact keyphrases we have in our back link anchor text. Just searching for (for example) "Web Designers UK" (or variations of that) is so saturated we long tail it or localise it which wins us clients. By removing the link from the "Web Design" part of the footer link I would be afraid that this would in time have a detrimental effect on our rankings for those search phrases.
I guess if we leave it as it is then there is always that risk that we could get a penalty anyway...
-
Hi Nathan
Do you link from every page on the sites you build or just the homepage?
I watched a Matt Cutts video the other day (<cite class="kv">www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0fgh5RIHdE)</cite> in which he explains that footer links get weighted less than links that are generally surrounded by page copy which I can understand but I was wondering if the sheer volume of these footer links, on a large site, all with the same anchor text could be seen as spammy?
I know we may never actually be 100% sure if they do or not but any thoughts or suggestions of members would be appreciated.
-
It sounds like many are concerned about this issue recently. It's a definite possibility that you could get an over optimisation penalty for the anchor text match and you could stop ranking for that term. I think the strategy going forward is probably to link back using your brand name or url only. If possible it would also be better if you can find a place for the link on your clients site that is not part of the main template so it doesn't cause a site wide link.
Consider changing your link to something like this:
Web Design by Jump
-
I understand completely what you are saying. I own a design firm in Atlanta, Georgia and we do a similar tactic. I personally, think it is important to vary your keywords you are targeting. It may look fishy that all your back links are keywords for web design.
A back-link from a site serves more of a purpose then just keywords. If the site receives a lot of traffic and people love the design they may click the link to see who designed it. We use the following anchor text " Powered By, Atlanta Small Business Web Design, Small Business Web Design, Developed By, Designed By and our link www.treelifedesigns.com
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
-
I am getting automatic spam links to my site, how can I remove them?
Hello, I need assistance, recently I noticed a huge traffic drop from my blog, lost all the rankings in SERP. I got to know that it's Google OCT Spam Update mainly it's about spamming and black hat techniques. But I haven't done any spammy practices or Black HAT SEO. I pay good amount of $ a month to freelancing content writers and don't make any spam backlinks. My site is : tcmguide.com Checked my site in search console and noticed that I had out of no where got 13000+ links from different dirty sites, as I have never tried to building those links in my life. 13 382 links.jpg I tried to export and Disavow this but via Export I got access to 1000 only and can't find these links in MOZ. Moz is showing other links, can any one help me out to recover my traffic and If my site is hit with Spam Update, how can I recover from it. Please help me felling pretty demotivated and stressed
Link Building | | dsdfsdfdfdfvg330 -
Am I better off with ten links from one site or one link from ten sites?
I am writing a series of linked-back articles for a highly-ranked web publisher, but wonder if I'd be better off sharing the articles across different sites. My goal is to grow our domain authority and SEO rankings.
Link Building | | Lysarden0 -
Why am I getting links in my link report from sites that no longer exist?
So, I have a link report from Link Detox. And I'm going through all of them and considering what sites need to be removed. and trying to find emails and contact webmasters. There is just one odd thing i'm starting to see more of. A lot of links are on websites or webpages that no longer exist. The link no longer exists. Some of the domains are even available for purchase. Why are these links showing on the backlink report and are they really harming my website? Also, do I need to add these links into the disavow document that I will submit to Google?
Link Building | | lightwurx0 -
Sitewide link to a sister site question
I own two websites that are somewhat related. On Site A, in the nav bar below the header I had a link to Site B. The nav bar shows on all several hundred pages. A few weeks ago I got nervous about this as I was doing some reading about sitewide links. Not exactly sure if they were a bad thing or not in this specific case, I decided to change the nav bar so that the link to Site B only showed up on Site A's home page. Well, within a week or so my site started dropping from its long-held #1 position for its main, high-volume keyword, slipping a bit every few days. Today it is #4. My question is, would the removal of the sitewide links and replacement of them with just a link on the homepage cause something like this to happen? And, I'm thinking about putting the sidewide menu link back in -- is this a bad idea? Note: the ranking on Site B is very important, with double the RPM of Site A.
Link Building | | bizzer0 -
"ghost" links on opensite explorer
today I've checked link building progress for a site I am working on. I've noticed lots of new links and new domains, I was happy but a bit surprised because I havent'y done any serious link building yet. investigating more, I've checked the pages that should be linking my site, and these pages are on totally unreleated sites or they doesn't even exist! as an example, my site is about road bicycles, and opensite report this links: www.murrayschicken.com/
Link Building | | DavideM
murrayschicken.com/alejandro-suaya
murrayschicken.com/weeds-actress
murrayschicken.com/gt-bikes-bump
murrayschicken.com/goldie-gray
murrayschicken.com/anna-elias
murrayschicken.com/brian-joseph-ochab and 14 more as you can see, these pages are down. probably never existed. so what's happen? opensite is getting crazy? www.murrayschicken.com/ has been got hacked? my client is doing some black hat link building? any opinions?0 -
Why Google is not getting many of the links to my site?
Hello, I have a website for cosmetics, selling and a lot of information (http://www.vipcosmetica.com). For about half a year I've been working also in seo for several google keywords. My question is about the external links to my site. Using different tools, including those of SEOMoz, I see just a few links to my site, however there are plenty, because I've been putting them myself, in public directories, related blogs, industry websites and so on. Alexa shows 5 links only, OpenSiteExplorer shows 4, and Market Samurai 9. I thinks theres should be like 50-60 links, minimum, in pages with good google PR (Youtube, Vimeo, Vulka, Hotfrog, Digg, Flickr, etc.). In Alexa, recently two more links appeared, from two blogs that have copied some content from my site (priveta policy) without changing the original links that point to other pages on my site, and those are the links that Alexa shows now. What could be the reason the rest of the links do not appear at all? Thank you very much
Link Building | | MadridOriflame0 -
How long does it take for crawlers to update links? As in number of back links
How long does it take for crawlers to update links? As in number of back links
Link Building | | tom14cat140 -
Is there a tool to show you new links to your site?
Are there any tools that show you new backlinks that you have recently gained?
Link Building | | MarieHaynes0