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.
Website credits for designers - good or bad
-
Hi My core service is web design and development. I often place a credit on my clients websites pointing them back to my web design or web development pages. Is this a wise practice with penguin and panda updates? Would this also pull my ranking down?
-
Wow, yea... 85,000 incoming footer links would be a problem
Do let us know in a followup if you see a difference.
Good luck!
P.
P.S. And thanks for the 'good answer' vote
<object id="plugin0" style="position: absolute; z-index: 1000;" width="0" height="0" type="application/x-dgnria"><param name="tabId" value="undefined"> <param name="counter" value="144"></object>
-
That is actually an excellent approach, I have looked at two clients sites on as 50,000 links back to my hosting page and another has 35,000 back to my design page. The link is within the footer of everypage. (one site has news items updating every 30mins so that's why the numbers are so high) I can easily change the footers to no follow and then ask if I can put a little sentence into the about page on there site saying thanks to me creating the site. I can implement this change on the big site instantly as they allow me to do what I want to the site:o) Excited to see if this makes a difference now
thanks
-
I'm going to suggest a hybrid of a number of the approaches mentioned, Cocoon. And the reason is because you essentially have two different purposes in mind.
The footer links should be thought of as click-generating links for real eyeballs. You want to make it easy if someone like the site you designed to be able to find you as the developer. So it's primary purpose is click-throughs. Design it as the call to action you think will best generate clickthroughs.Making the anchor text a little different on each site can't hurt either.
Being sitewide, and on several different sites, these footer links are prime candidates for Penguin devaluation, so no-follow these. Which isn't a problem because you're designing them for clickthrough, not rank-passing anyway.
Then, see if you can get an editorial link from the website as well. "About" pages can be ideal for this as they usually rank fairly well so can pass some juice. And it makes sense that an About page might talk about the folks who built the site. An added advantage is that About pages don't generally have a huge number of additional links, so there's more juice to pass.
And DEFINITELY try to get reviews from your satisfied clients on Google and Yelp at least. Web designers don't typically show up in local search features, but getting the reviews to help your Google+ Local page to rank as well is still very valuable.
Interested to know what you think of this approach.
Paul
<object id="plugin0" style="position: absolute; z-index: 1000;" width="0" height="0" type="application/x-dgnria"><param name="tabId" value="undefined"> <param name="counter" value="166"></object>
-
We are about to change how we do link back to our site with the method you describe e.g. home page only link which goes to a the project page for that client on our website.
What's the most appropriate format for such a footer link? Should the footer link be brand name text or keyword text or image link with an appropriate alt tag?
-
The main intent with the footer link is to try acquire additional clients, so just having it in a blog post can potentially cost you business. However, you do have to worry about over-optimizing yourself due to all the links with exact match anchor text. There was actually a different blog post about this recently:
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2239260/Using-Footer-Links-to-Diversify-Your-Backlink-Profile
In the article it suggested creating a page on your website specifically about this project. This ensures that you link to a relevant page, in Google's eyes, as well as a relevant page for anyone that is interested in your services. The blog also suggests no-following all of the links minus the one on the home page. That way you still get a decent amount of link juice, but don't have to worry about a site-wide link.
-
That's a sound solution , I ve been adding to the footer. Possible get them to write review on google places reviews. Think need to change my approach. Cheers Takeshi
-
I think it's still a fine way of getting links, as long as you're not overdoing it. Instead of spamming anchor text links in the footers like a lot of companies do, you could try just having a link on the homepage, or have them write a blog post about your company with an in-context link.
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
-
Query string parameters always bad for SEO?
I've recently put some query string parameters into links leading to a 'request a quote' form which auto-fill the 'product' field with the name of the product that is on the referring product page. E.g. Red Bicycle product page >>> Link to RFQ form contains '?productname=Red-Bicycle' >>>> form's product field's default value becomes 'Red-Bicycle' I know url parameters can lead to keyword cannibalisation and duplicate content, we use sub-domains for our language changer. BUT for something like this, am I potentially damaging our SEO? Appreciate I've not explained this very well. We're using Kentico by the way, so K# macros are a possibility (I use a simple one to fill the form's Default Field).
Technical SEO | Mar 6, 2018, 9:33 PM | landport0 -
Any SEO benefits of adding a Glossary to our website?
Hi all, I manage a website for a software company. Many terms can be quite tricky so it would be nice to add a Glossary page. Other than that, I have 2 questions: 1. What would be the SEO benefits? 2. How would you suggest to implement this glossary so we can get as much SEO benefit as possible (for example how would we link, where would we place the glossary in the terms of the sitemap, etc.). Any advice appreciated! Katarina
Technical SEO | Aug 21, 2017, 5:54 AM | Katarina-Borovska2 -
I have multiple URLs that redirect to the same website. Is this an issue?
I have multiple URLs that all lead to the same website. Years ago they were purchased and were sitting dormant. Currently they are 301 redirects and each of the URLs feed to different areas of my website. Should I be worried about losing authority? And if so, is there a better way to do this?
Technical SEO | Apr 6, 2016, 3:38 AM | undrdog990 -
The W3C Markup Validation Service - Good, Bad or Impartial?
Hi guys, it seems that now days it is almost impossible to achieve 0 (Zero) Errors when testing a site via (The W3C Markup Validation Service - https://validator.w3.org). With analytic codes, pixels and all kind of tracking and social media scripts gunning it seems to be an unachievable task. My questions to you fellow SEO'rs out there are 2: 1. How important and to what degree of effort do you go when you technically review a site and make the decision as to what needs to be fixed and what you shouldn't bother with. 2. How do you argue your corner when explaining to your clients that its impossible to active 100% validation. *As a note i will say that i mostly refer to Wordpress driven sites. would love ot hear your take. Daniel.
Technical SEO | Sep 10, 2015, 12:35 PM | artdivision0 -
I have a GoDaddy website and have multiple homepages
I have GoDaddy website builder and a new website http://ecuadorvisapros.com and I notices through your crawl test that there are 3 home pages http://ecuadorvisapros with a 302 temporary redirect, http://www.ecuadorvisapros.com/ with no redirect and http://www.ecuadorvisapros/home.html. GoDaddy says there is only one home page. Is this going to kill my chances of having a successful website and can this be fixed? Or can it. I actually went with the SEO version thinking it would be better, but it wants to auto change my settings that I worked so hard at with your sites help. Please keep it simple, I am a novice although I have had websites in the past I know more about the what's than the how's of websites. Thanks,
Technical SEO | Aug 25, 2015, 4:23 PM | ScottR.0 -
Are 404 Errors a bad thing?
Good Morning... I am trying to clean up my e-commerce site and i created a lot of new categories for my parts... I've made the old category pages (which have had their content removed) "hidden" to anyone who visits the site and starts browsing. The only way you could get to those "hidden" pages is either by knowing the URLS that I used to use or if for some reason one of them is spidering in Google. Since I'm trying to clean up the site and get rid of any duplicate content issues, would i be better served by adding those "hidden" pages that don't have much or any content to the Robots.txt file or should i just De-activate them so now even if you type the old URL you will get a 404 page... In this case, are 404 pages bad? You're typically not going to find those pages in the SERPS so the only way you'd land on these 404 pages is to know the old url i was using that has been disabled. Please let me know if you guys think i should be 404'ing them or adding them to Robots.txt Thanks
Technical SEO | Jan 20, 2013, 9:53 PM | Prime850 -
Blog Ranking NOT home page main website?!
Hi, Our Blog (http://blog.thailand-investigation.com) is ranking for some of our major keywords but not our home page (http://www.thailand-investigation.com)!? Our blog is WordPress and our main website is HTML. It seems like the search engines consider that they are 2 separate websites!? When I check the incoming links to our website, I get also the blog links!!!??? Is it normal? Do I have to build a relation of some kind or write some code saying that it is our Blog... I don't know! I'm not a SEO specialist or even a webmaster. I'm a small business owner and take care on my website. I created by myself but never learned! So, please help! Thanks
Technical SEO | Nov 10, 2012, 1:47 PM | MichelMauquoi0 -
Sitemap for dynamic website with over 10,000 pages
If I have a website with thousands of products, is it a good idea to create a sitemap for this website for the search engines where you show maybe 250 products on a page so it makes it easy for the search engine to find the part and also puts that part closer to the home page? Seems like google likes pages that are the closest to the home page (less clicks the better)
Technical SEO | Oct 26, 2011, 4:34 AM | roundbrix0