Is there any BAD SEO implications to acquiring backlinks from customers?
-
What would be the negative aspects to sending customer's requests for a backlink in conjunction with asking how their experience with us was?
Backlinks are one of the toughest for our niche industry to acquire and this seems like one of the best angles to cover, since we have .edu , .mil , .gov , and many bigname companies making purchases from us.
Would if be wrong to offer a small 5% discount during their next purchase if they create a backlink with us? Or if we added a " Customer's we've served " section including their logo or text link?
Thank you!
I hope you're all having an awesome day / week / month!
-
you are fine, as long as there is a genuine reason for the link. If you think that link is useful for the user of that site then do it otherwise do not.
-
Thank you, especially for the FTC link, I didn't even think they dealt with things of this matter, but there it is.
As for the footer links, I'm staying far, far away from that, I'd only create another page for the customer links to go on, and scheme it as a customer's we've served / dealt with section, listing the link / logo as well as the good or bad words they had, maybe even the products they bought, and how those products held up.
It's been a goal of mine for this company to create as much helpful content as I can think of, then to push brain through a playdoh extruder and get even more.
Thanks again! Love the minds here on this site.
-
I would recommend reviewing Google's guidelines on Link Schemes very closely. If you offer a discount if someone links to you, I'd consider that on the same level as a paid link or paid endorsement. The other thing you need to really watch if you're having customers review your business is the FTC guideline regulating the disclosure of paid endorsements if you're planning on offering some sort of payment or discount.
If a customer links to you because you did a great job, then it's cool. If you tell them what URL to link to and what anchor text to use, then it's going to be seen as manipulation. Getting customers to review your business or link to you is a good idea; you just need to make sure you're doing it the right way. You don't need a discount if the customers really loved what you did.
I'm also in the camp of not putting footer links from a client site to mine. If you put it there because you work on a client's site and it's passing juice to your site, then it kind of seems like it's only there to benefit your ranking. I've seen this debate go back and forth, so I'd really like to see other opinions (preferably contradictory to mine) to see why designer/developer links in the footer would be good. I think they would be fine if you no-followed the link, so it wouldn't pass any benefit. If you only wanted it for traffic, then cool, but really how qualified would that traffic be? Curious to see other thoughts.
-
There aren't really any negative SEO implications to having a client's site backlink to yours. The only way there would be is if their site is spammy or something to that effect. This is true both for having a link to their site in yours, and vice versa (which I only bring up because of your last question).
There's also nothing wrong with offering a discount on the next purchase that customer makes. However, I've found that most customers are OK with doing this without having to do that. I've actually set it up so that, in our contracts, we have a clause that says we're allowed to, at our own discretion, add our logo and a link back to our site in the footer of theirs (with certain reasonable restrictions, etc).
Either method works. Asking how they feel about your service is an equally valid method of achieving this. You're good to go!
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
-
Backlink question
When I create a website for my clients, I always put our website link in the footer of the description, just to say 'powered by ieatdoorframes' with a link to our website. On SEMrush, its showing as a negative backlink with the reason 'compound', suggesting its a 'money term'. I add this link as I've had success getting new work from clients who like the site we built. I'm new to these terminologies and wondering what I should do?
Link Building | | chrisjordan0i10 -
Is it better to have backlinks from domains with medium DA, UR, using same language and good relevancy, or backlinks from domains with high DA, UR but using another language and with less relevancy?
Dear all, while I understand that quality backlinks with high DA, UR, same-language and relevancy would be best, would backlinks with high DA, UR but less relevancy and using languages other than the one used in my website be something good? Or would they do more harm than anything else and still be outcompeted by backlinks with lower DA, UR but same language and/or more relevancy? Thank you Frank
Link Building | | Frank_Smith0 -
Subdomains and SEO
My question has 2 parts: 1) Can you optimize a subdomain template site (a company is providing us with a template site they provide many other salespeople, but we can control the meta and content on each page), and 2) Does forwarding and masking another domain to the subdomain in question, hurt my SEO efforts?
Link Building | | gotchamobi0 -
Backlinking
I read the moz begainers guide and I am confuse over this point. " If i have too many back links from a single site. It's considered too spammy. " Q: I have a blog and it constantly black links to my ranking page, is this considered bad? Q: I have an active forum that I go to and I am constantly contributing to the topic however i will always try to relate back to my website, is this considered spammy too?
Link Building | | kevinbp0 -
Backlinks outside my country
Hi there! If the product, service or resouce I offer is located in my country: Is it worth to include directories located in p.e EEUU in order to increase my Pagerank although this is not my potencial client (due to the "distance" obviouly).? If my potencial clients were people fromo other countries that could come to mine to enjoy this service? Should I include my links in directories of these countries and obtain links from websites of these countries? many thanks
Link Building | | juanmiguelcr0 -
How long for backlinks to kick in?
Lets say you do a guest post, Google indexes the article which must mean it has found the link back. Would you expect to see movement straight away? Some of my latest guest posts (in the last week) have been indexed but have shown no movement at all, but when I check WMT for links coming in they are not in the list so im guessing they have not taken full effect?
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Starting My First Backlink Campaign
Hi Team, I've started my first campaign and would like some advice on building backlinks. I have got the no. 1 competitor's backlinks through OSE. Here is the first backlink URL as mentioned in OSE. for them: www.uofaemergency.org/ (DA: 45 PA:44) However the backlink appears on another page of that domain, not on the homepage as it says in OSE. That backlinking page as a PA of just 1. Do I go for the homepage or the page on which the competitor's backlink appears? It is an unrelated site to the niche and the content in which the link appears is nonsensical. Does this matter as far as link juice is concerned? Is this a good site or page to get a link from? How do I go about getting an in content anchor text link from this site? What's the required process? I would like to start buidling good links asap and start to get rankings for my site. Thanks. Sunil.
Link Building | | sunilmuse0 -
Please have a look at the SEO of our site
Hi, Could you look at nlpca(dot)com and give me feedback and hints about the on -page SEO of our site, as well as any suggestions of link building strategies to move us up to first for the head term "NLP" as well as the long tail Thank you, Bob
Link Building | | BobGW0