Footer link back to developers domain
-
I have read a lot about where it is suggested to either not put an attribute link in the footer of a clients site or to no follow it. But I have a little bit different take on the question.
How does this work on a large scale? Are these manual penalties, or are they automatic? By large scale, I am talking about big cms programs such as Wordpress, Joomla, and the likes of those. They all have links back to their site in the footer of the default templates. Is this bad? Does it not rally matter on the scale of companies such as this?
-
There are definitely sites that are (to quote George Orwell) "more equal than others".
Wordpress would be hooped is those types of links were catalysts to a penalty ... at least in a level world. I dont' think anyone could say with 100% certainty that it won't bite you in the butt so nofollow is probably the route to go.
-
I just wrote an answer to the post above, but the jist is not that it is an attribution link like so and so developed this site. It is more a default theme for a major software package. It might get 100k natural links in a month from having it in the footer. I would venture to guess it gets around 10k a month now from it.
-
I understand the thinking of that, but at the same time I am asking a question not about putting a link back on my clients pages. It has to do with the default theme of a major cms package. Something that might get 100k or so backlinks in a or two from people installing it.
After the whole pinterest thing, I think it is pretty obvious that Google has sites that they treat differently because of what ever reason. This might very well be one of those sites. Or I could be totally off base on this line of thinking.
I am just trying to figure out if a major default theme is going to suffer from not using a no-follow, or if it really does not matter per se.
-
Hi Lesley
It would be good to hear from others on this, but I think that footer backlinks like these to the developer's site are largely ignored by Google these days in terms of passing SEO value.
For many web developers, adding a link like that has been a sort of credit to them, rather like have a credit at the end of a film. It's what web developers have done and many still do. I haven't heard of any web developer's sites being slapped by having multiple backlinks like this, so maybe Google does see it that way.
Peter
-
As an SEo I never do it but that's more to the question, do I want to say, "Hey Google, here's a site that's been SEO'd." From the perspective of a web designer simply taking credit for their work, I've only seen it cause issues recently if they're followed links and anchor heavy. From my experience, branded links seem to work fine but mix it up.
That said, who knows what's coming. If you want to play it safe - nofollow is the way to go. But then, you probably knew that.
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
-
International Websites - Hosting, Domain Names, & Configuration
What is the best way to configure a website that targets a number of countries and languages around the world? For example, Apple has websites optimized for just about every country and language in the world (see: https://www.apple.com/choose-country-region/). When you choose the UK it takes you to: https://www.apple.com/uk/ When you choose China it take you to: https://www.apple.com/cn/ Etc. When you go to apple.co.uk it forwards you to the UK version of the website. The same is true for apple.cn. Is this the ideal way to set it up? I have also seen websites that have each version of the website on its own TLD such as exampleBrand.co.uk and exampleBrand.cn - in this example they don't forward to the .com. My concern with Apple's solution is SEO and hosting. Do consumers favor seeing their country's TLD in search results over exampleBrand.com/uk? For hosting, shouldn't the mainland China version of the website be hosted in China? Is it possible to just host a folder of a website in a certain country such as the cn folder for China? Any suggestions would be appreciated. I was unable to find much info on this.
Web Design | | rx3000 -
Is it possible to move a couple of posts and comments from one WP domain to another
Hi, We want to move a couple of dozen articles from one of our self-hosted wordpress website to another self-hosted Wordpress website. Is there a way to this such that the following content is also included in the migration:
Web Design | | seocuppa
1. Post content (including images and meta if possible)
2. Comments Do note the older site from which we want to move out the content has more than 2000 posts and we just want to move 60-70 posts. Thanks.0 -
Links not visible in "Google cache text version" but visible in "Fetch as Google" in Webmaster tool
Hi Guys, There seems some issue with the coding due to which Google is not indexing half of our menu bar links. The cached text version of http://www.99acres.com/ is not showing links present in dropdown "All India" , dropdown "Advice" and "Hot Projects" tab in blue bar on top menu whereas these links are visible in "Fetch as Google" in Google Webmaster tool. Any clue to why is there a difference between the links shown in Google webmaster and Google cache text version. Thanks in advance 🙂
Web Design | | vivekrathore0 -
Should my link href be www or go direct to page?
Hi, just wondering which is the best format for linking to pages. In my navigation at the moment i have links like; Car Repair Services Is this the recommended format or should it be; Car Repair Services Many thanks for any answers. Alex
Web Design | | SeoSheikh0 -
Having your blog on an external domain, is this ok?
We have our website / ecomm cart with network solutions and they do not allow you to have a internal blog like www.islesurfboards.com/blog . So the only solution is to have the blog on a external domain www.islesurfboardsblog.com which we set up. Is this ok for seo purposes or are we gonna miss out on alot by doing this. Any help?
Web Design | | isle_surf0 -
What is the best information architecture for developing local seo pages?
I think I have a good handle on the external local seo factors such as citations but I'd like to determine the best IA layout for starting a new site or adding new content to a local site. I see lots of small sites with duplicate content pages for each town/area which I know is poor practice. I also see sites that have unique content for each of those pages but it seems like bad design practice, from a user perspective, to create so many pages just for the search engines. To the example... My remodeling company needs to have some top level pages on its site to help the customers learn about my product, call these "Kitchen Remodeling" and "Bathroom Remodeling" for our purposes. Should I build these pages to be helpful to the customer without worrying too much about the SEO for now and focus on subfolders for my immediate area which would target keywords like "Kitchen Remodeling Mytown"? Aside from my future site, which is not a priority, I would like to be equipped to advise on best practices for the website development in situations where I am involved at the beginning of the process rather than just making the local SEO fit after the fact. Thanks in advance!
Web Design | | EthanB0 -
Does on page links have an effect on SERP rankings with PANDA
I have been doing some competitive analysis basing my company on others and have noticed a pattern. Very high ranking sites seem to have limited the internal and external on page links on their subdomains to under 100. my site has a lot of links but all are relevant and lead to unique content. I am interested to know if anyone else has noticed this pattern in changes in the SERP results. bIs google now penalizing pages with to many on site nav links? And if a full site restructure is needed to allow google to index and rank these pages or if a it is a non issue and does not need to be addressed. Panda confuses me!!!!! HELP!
Web Design | | Brother220 -
Optimal redirect configuration from a misspelled domain that we own.
We have a handful of inbound links to www.t-chek.com (note the hyphen). Our normal site is www.tchek.com (no hyphen). We own both domains and have some sort of domain-wide redirect set up now. This works fine for traffic, but I suspect it's not optimal for SEO purposes. I came to this conclusion by looking in OSE and noticing that none of the inbound links to www.t-chek.com were also being attributed to www.tchek.com. 2 questions: Is it immediately evident what type of redirect I have in place now, or do I need to figure that out? Is the fix as simple as editing the .htaccess file on the hyphenated domain? I don't have direct control over the hyphenated domain, and I'd like to be able to know exactly what we need to do so I can request help from my IT department. I'd appreciate hearing your wisdom. Thanks!
Web Design | | SheriGolla0