Should You Link Back from Client's Website?
-
We had a discussion in the office today, about if it can help or hurt you to link back to your site from one that you optimize, host, or manage.
A few ideas that were mentioned:
HURT:
1. The website is not directly related to your niche, therefore Google will treat it as a link exchange or spammy link.
2. Links back to you are often not surrounded by related text about your services, and looks out of place to users and Search Engines.HELP:
1. On good (higher PR, reputable domain) domains, a link back can add authority, even if the site is not directly related to your services.
2. Allows high ranking sites to show users who the provider is, potentially creating a new client, and a followed incoming link on anchor text you can choose.So, what do you think? Test results would be appreciated, as we are trying to get real data. Benefits and cons if you have an opinion.
-
Hi everyone
We have read through all these comments, but still not sure what to do about this. We do church web design, and our link would be on church websites. That seems relevant to me.
These responses go back to 2014. Is there any current advice or information on this topic?
Thanks:-)
-
As someone who used to work at a company on the Recommended list (and who was in charge of the Contact form) - we did get leads. They were about 80% appropriate for the business model, although a lot were too small or wanting short-term projects (my agency generally took on corporate-level accounts for long periods of time). I would say that this sort of linking is different to just linking to clients, e.g. if we then went on to link to an insurance company that came to us through a Moz Recommended referral. But if your SEO company partners with a PPC agency or design firm, provides some services to the other and sends out a relevant link, that seems a little more relevant.
On the other hand, I hate these discussions about what we're "allowed" to link to
-
Under No Circumstances do I see this to be something you should do. I often advise clients to get any link which isn't giving value to the user off the site ASAP.
Often that includes "Site created by ..." Lowest of the low I'm afraid.
So that's a No from me!
-
People who come to Moz are in the same niche as the recommended companies. It'd be way different if I had the same link at the bottom of my site that's about model battleships.
-
I'd think -- or hope! -- that Google Penguin or something else would stop that result at some point.
-
I hear a potential YouMoz post?
Footer links may not refer a lot of valuable traffic. But other types of pages could. For example: I'm sure the businesses that are on Moz's recommended list get leads. Pages with similar types of (no-follow) links could do the same (rather than footer links).
-
Only robots who don't buy anything.
-
To be honest, I doubt anyone really gets much referral business from footer links no follow or not. It clearly a way of getting authority high pr links for free.
-
I'd love to see a case study from a firm talking about the amount of traffic they get from these links, and if it turns into any leads or sales for them.
-
Ive seen a company in Glasgow that does this to the extreme. In fact they rank for "seo glasgow" and their link profile is made up of all footer links. seo by seo glasgow and they rank well. web design by "web design glasgow" etc
-
Yes, that is better.... but you will only be able to do it on websites that tolerate unpaid advertising.
-
Thumbed-up for being what I would do!
-
What about something like : "Site design By Company Link" that is no-follow? That way you can get direct traffic but doesnt pass link juice?
-
With owner permission "having your name on the site in unlinked text" seems the best to do.
I remember the penalty story of 'Web Design Yorkshire by Pinpoint Designs' - http://moz.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-google-penalty-removal
<greyhat>Need to vary anchor text if you do it :).</greyhat>
-
CNN, Tribune, and other big companies often have both in-house people and agencies. I know people who are at (or were at) both CNN and the Tribune who are in-house SEOs who work with contracted agencies.
-
I would advise against it for one simple reason: You would be directly violating Google's guidelines and setting both you and your clients up for potential penalties.
Google states: Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.
If you actively build a do-follow link on another site for the purposes of affecting search results, then you are doing exactly this.
-
CNN, WJS, Today, and ESPN have their own in-house team of developers and designers. i think that's not a good example.
Having a link to your website from a client website as you say yes is a good advertising as a web developer agency or hosting company. they are outsourcing services which means to them less head ache and saving money because they don't have to buy a server or have a full time in-house developer and SEO specialist which from my point will be a fair trade of having the companies link on their website as well as sometimes the agencies put their clients links on their websites as success stories or current customers.
-
Allows high ranking sites to show users who the provider is, potentially creating a new client, and a followed incoming link on anchor text you can choose.
My answer on this has nothing to do with SEO.
It has to do with where I believe the role of a service provider is supposed to begin and end.
I personally think that SEOs linking back to their own sites from a client site is low form. The SEO is supposed to be helping the client not siphoning his power. You could accomplish that visibility by simply having your name on the site in unlinked text. Adding a link is unnecessary and greedy.
When I see those links on other sites, I do find it to be useful information. I know who I would not hire.
Honestly, if an SEO or designer or hosting provider wanted to put a link on my site I would tell him "no" nicely. If they argued or pressed for it my consideration of his company would be concluded. The link is not necessary for attribution.
If an SEO or hosting company wanted to have their name at the bottom of my site without the link I would tell them how much it would cost to advertise there. The value of that advertising would probably exceed the value of the service that they provided.
If you go to a big brand site such as CNN, WSJ, Today, ESPN, you don't see links to SEOs, hosting or designers. They are not being billboards for their service providers.
My displeasure on this is extremely strong against SEOs and hosting providers. For designers I can understand why they ask. For a designer, if I am exceedingly pleased with what they have done I might list them on the "about us" page, where I mention a few people who have contributed to the content of the site. Why the designer? Because they improved what people see and that includes matching the design to my content or complimenting it.
I have different views when it comes to photographs, graphics, videos. I always name the creator of those content assets and often link to their website in the caption. Why? Because they are a content source and my visitors might want to see more of their work. It is similar to a reference link on a Wikipedia article. Those links are useful to the visitors. Even if I paid them a license fee, I mention them and usually link to them (the only exception is with a thumbnail, but that thumbnail always links to an article where their photo is prominent and with attribution and usually a link). I give them attribution because I want to help them. They usually have sites that are less visible than mine. And I want them to feel that the got back more than they gave.
My site is not about SEO or about hosting or design. So a link to those sites is not useful to my visitor, so it really should not be there.
-
We never place a link without the site owners permission.
-
Just to be clear, are you going to ask for the client's permission first?
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
-
What is the best strategy for dissolving an innocently created link network with over 100 websites?
Hello Moz Community, Over many years 120 websites were created all under a couple different organizations around the globe. The sites are interconnected via anchor text and domain name links and some redirect to larger sites. The teachings have a central theme and many tools, training programs, events, locations and services are offered on many different websites. Attached is a slice of a Majestic Link Graph showing the network. God bless Majestic for this new tool! We are looking for solutions that are efficient and effective in regards to usability, rankings and being achievable. Thank you so much for your help! Donna EJhNPqT
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Awakening-Mind0 -
HELP! My website has been penalized - what did I do wrong?
I have been working on a website Zing.co.nz and have made a sub domain blog.zing.co.nz. The website is for a company that is yet to launch, so I have been boosting traffic by writing blog posts about the topic (loans) on the subdomain. I pushed some traffic to the actual website too. We were climbing the rankings for our brand name but have all of a sudden started to drop. The domain authority was something like 0.9 and has dropped to 0.3. (Using SEO Spyglass) The blog was somewhere similar, but has dropped to 0.0!!! Please help in anyway you can. These changes have happened within the last 48 hours. Zing.co.nz Blog.zing.co.nz
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Startupfactory0 -
Footer images links, good or bad?
Hi everybody! I have a very serius question because i have a problem with this. We run a website of voucher codes and we are looking that our rivals are putting their logos on footers of online stores with images, sometimes link to home, sometimes link to store within webpage. Should i ask for the same to online stores? I have scary to get a penalty by Google. Please help me with this and recommend me something because we are doing fair play but rivals are doing this and they get best results in SERPS. Thanks very much! Best regards!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | pompero990 -
Are CDN's good or bad for SEO? - Edmonton Web
Hello Moz folks, We just launched a new website: www.edmontonweb.ca It is now ranking on page 2 in our city. The website is built on Wordpress and we have made every effort to make it load faster. We have enabled the right caching and we have reduced the file size. Still, some of our local competitors have lower load times and more importantly lower ttfb's. Is a CDN the right answer? I've read articles demonstrating that Clowd Flare decreased a websites rankings. Is there a better CDN to use, or a propper way to implement Clowd Flare? Thank you very much for your help! Anton,
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Web3Marketing87
LAUNCH Edmonton0 -
Rankings dropped, should I start a new website?
Hello, my rankings dropped last year (penguin update) - I think it was April 2012 and the website went from 300 visitors per day to 10 per day. This probably happened because I bought links, but I also did a lot of manual and natural SEO (at that time). After the drop, I didn't know what to do... so I did some manual SEO, blog comments, forum posts, article publications (lets say 60 links in total - with diverse anchor texts - brand keywords, etc) and then I paused working on the site to see if there will be any changes... and 1 year latter, there are still no changes. My site used to be in the top results of the first page and now it is totally out of Google. http://getmoreyoutubeviews.com Should I move on and start a new website or do something to fix this one? Thanks Alex
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | buysocialexposure0 -
Can I just delete pages to get rid of bad back-links to those pages?
I just picked up a client who had built a large set of landing pages (1000+) and built a huge amount of spammy links to them (too many to even consider manually requesting deletion for from the respective webmasters). We now think that google may also be seeing the 'landing pages' as 'doorway pages' as there are so many of them 1000+ and they are all optimized for specific keywords and generally pretty low quality. Also, the client received an unnatural links found email from google. I'm going to download the links discovered by google around the date of that email and check out if there are any that look specifily bad but I'm sure it will be just one of the several thosand bad links they built. Anyway, they are now wanting to clean up their act and are considering deleting the landing/doorway pages in a hope to a. rank better for the other non landing/doorway pages (Ie category and sub cats) but more to the crux of my question.. b. essentially get rid of all the 1000s of bad links that were built to those landing/doorway pages. - will this work? if we just remove those pages and use 404 or 410 codes will google see any inbound (external) links to those pages as basicly no longer being links to the site? or is the TLD still likely to be penilized for all the bad links coming into no longer existing URLs on it? Also, any thoughts on whether a 404 or 410 would be better is appreciated. Some info on that here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=64033 I guess another option is the disavow feature with google, but Matt Cutts video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=393nmCYFRtA&feature=em- kind of makes it sound like this should just be used for a few links, not 1000s... Thanks so much!!!!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | zingseo0 -
Are there tools out there to determine when a link linked to your site? I want to know when a link farm was done a site.
In Webmaster Tools I discovered that a client of mine with signed up for or hired another company to get links. The links are poor quality and from other countries, so it looks like a link farm was done. I want to know when they links were linked to the site, and not sure how to find that information out. Does anyone know how to find this out?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | StrategicEdgePartners0 -
Do Friends Let Friends Sell Links?
I have a friend with a site that has a lot of content. Some of that content has affiliate links with no follows to affiliate urls. Those pages also have a disclosure on them about the affiliate relationship. Now, he's talking about taking some of the existing under-performing affiliate links and renting them out to another site that wants them for the link juice. He says he'd have an on-page disclosure, a display ad for the advertiser on the page and something in the text like "you might check out our advertiser..." and then some keyword targeted link. He was asking me how risky I thought this is for him and really I don't know.Do you think Google would find this and s**t a chicken over it? I really don't know, given that I see really blatant undisclosed rented links all the time.Of course, my easy answer to him is "don't do it," but it does make me wonder how risky that is. Also, is that a realistic site-wide penalty kind of thing or it just doesn't pass any link juice to the advertiser kind of thing? So, I'm posting here for others to weigh in on. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | 945010