Is it ok for a web design company to have a branded footer link on their client's sites?

[Static_Shift]

Now I know that in general footer links to your site from another site are bad...this is because they are very often spammy...however I like to think that Google is pretty smart and I am of the opinion that a web design company should be able to link back to their own site. Here's why:

If a visitor comes across a site that they love the design of, and they want a new website built...why shouldn't they be able to click through to the web designers site? (as long as the client is happy to link to it of course)

I also feel that if there are a whole bunch of high authority/pagerank websites have been designed by a web design company and they therefore have a footer link pointing to them, it's probably a pretty good sign that they're a good web designer. Is it not?

In saying this I think that the link anchor text should be branded rather than keywords. For example I usually write "Web Design by Static Shift"

I'm interested to hear people's thoughts. Am I being blinded by my bias?

Thoughts aside, and onto the facts...what are people's experiences with footer links for a web design company. Do they help or hinder?

[SamDarcy93]

Check this article out really helpful

http://seoaltitude.com/the-web-design-footer-link-debate/

[Wolfpacksweet]

Hi Guys

Very interesting read

I think it's abnormal not to leave a signature on your clients website. I really think it's a sign of pride of doing great work. It's the only way to showcase your brand, how is a website any different to any other manufactured good eg car, shoes, etc? In addition when you showing someone your portfolio it's always good to have a cross reference so they can verify it's your companies work. I think what is dirty is when people change the link to claim the credit for work they have not completed, then pick up the benefit of the link.. Cheers for sharing.

[gfiedel]

I'm with Randy Epp on this but it does raise questions and concern for me. I am surprised by the critical attitude connected with opinions that many of you share that designers shouldn't include links to their sites. I've never encountered that sentiment before. We are also a web design company and follow the same practice: we include our intention and request for permission to place a brand link on our client's site in both the proposal and our contract. 99.99% of all our clients over close to 15 years in business have been more than happy to include that reference to us on their site. It also helps them in their promotion of us. The one exception was a company that requires a particular level of confidentiality and was unable to allow it. Our prospects also appreciate the ease with which they can contact us when they stumble upon a site they love and want to know who designed it. I understand that footer links like these have low value and have also fairly recently learned that they may be perceived by Google as unnatural links. We experienced a disasterous loss in page rank for our two top keywords in late December 2012. But we have had no warnings in Webmaster Tools and I am hoping our drop was not due to these links, but rather to a lack of other quality links compared to our competition. Especially since other keywords had no loss and our brand comes up #1 which implies no penalties. Additionally, our competitors also have footer links on their client sites. My main question around these links has been whether to go back and create variation in the anchor text and after reading this thread if we should go back and change to nofollow. Either way, I suspect that tedious amoun of time consuming labor is better spent creating more quality content and creating a link building plan.

[Laurean]

Only with the company's permission. I don't see much harm for this since we aren't in the "hosting game". Although we will host if we need to. Our clients are proud of the work we do and don't mind showing us off. Of course, we're pretty good at referring clients to them outside of how we've been contracted (ie:word of mouth). So, I think it boils down to agreement & relationship. Everything does.

[EGOL]

If you allow the links to be followed the recipient gains benefit and you lose PR through each link.

If you nofollow the links then recipient does not get PR and you still lose it.

What I described above his how Google most recently said they do things.

Are you saying that this is harmful and these links should be converted to a reciprocal do follow and if not, removed altogether?

I can't say anything about reciprocals.

I have pages similar to yours where I simply link to resources.  I don't have any relationship with the websites receiving the links.  This is simply a resource that might be helpful to my visitors.

If I owned your website I would optimize that page to compete for a relevant keyword.   The resources pages that I have hold good google rankings for good keywords and pull in more traffic than they send out..

One thing for sure is that I would not call it a "links" page.

[leatherhidestore]

Okay, so I have a resource page listing related websites from trade folks that  I know. I added these sites as a courtesy but nofollowed them of course.  Are you saying that this is harmful and these links should be converted to a reciprocal do follow and if not, removed altogether?

Here is the page if you are interested:

http://www.leatherhidestore.com/leathercrafters

[EGOL]

When nofollow was first announced, Google said that it could be used to "sculpt" pagerank.  Then Google changed their mind and allowed pagerank to evaporate - but they didn't tell anybody for a while.

So, just because Google says something today, you can't count on it being true forever, because they can change their mind but keep their mouths shut.

[leatherhidestore]

Great thread.  I just realized my site has a site wide footer link from my developer and I had no clue!  Irving stated this in an earlier post:

"if the links are nofollowed, both parties lose, PR is still leaked from the owners site and benefit is not gained for the website company"

How can this be?  I thought nofollow was the very tool we used so we would not leak PR?

[PixelgemsCreative]

As a web design company that does put a branded link in the footer on every website we do (it's part of the contract), we have not felt any effects from Penguin. We have follow links that usually say "Website Design by Pixelgems"

We host everything on our own server, and we have actually had our rankings go up since Penguin, but that could be due to better title tags and content. Is the general recommendation to make them no-follow links?

P.S. - I am not removing them. We do work we are proud of and get a lot of referral business, and business from people who follow these links. They are part of the price of having a website from us.

[expertvillagemedia]

Somewhere I read this that google devalue footer links thinking of them as signature links. So I dont think it matters to put those links in footer. But, I saw many companies put a signature link in footer of their client's website like this- WEB DESIGN COMPANY-- this is I think a poor strategy, google is wise enough to devalue or ignore such backlinks.. A web design company can work on 100 websites per quarter and that way they are getting atleast 400 such backlinks per year, who can match with them then? So google never value such urls.

Hope it helps....

I changed all footer links recently like this--- Expert Village Media
No url, no link back.. no keyword.. and I saw in analytics that people are searching this keyword in google and coming to our website. Google is happy, client is happy, and I am also getting my traffic.

Amit

[integra-telecom]

You (and companies burned by bad SEO practitioners everywhere) are in luck. Google recently released a tool to disavow links that are messing you up. Check out their Webmaster Central blog post, http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/

[Casefun]

What about footer links on seo companies linking back to a website with a keyword my website guy did this and he wont remove it and my seo company is saying it is effecting me is this true?

[edwardrj]

A link from one page will not hurt you. A wide dismemberment of sitewide links like this could hurt you. I seem to remember Google addressing this with WordPress theme footer links recently.

[spiderz]

I am paying the designer for doing design work.  He should not expect free advertising as part of the deal unless it is negotiated up front.  I have the attitude that the advertising should cost a lot more than the design job

@EGOL, I couldn't agree more! I found myself in such situation when paid to web-designer to make a site. From a client point of view it was a great surprise to see his company link in the footer (moreover he didn't inform me). At that time, I told to myself "well probably this is an industry standard or something". But the bottom line is that I paid for this site and that is why I am not in anyway obliged to advertise the designer who made it.

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey, I agree, Irving's suggestion is the better option all round if your going for the footer link.

[EGOL]

many seo companies put their site link in their client site's footer too!

I think that this is a good idea.  It tells me who I should not hire.

[Static_Shift]

I read through those articles and at first I agreed about nofollow. Then I saw Irving's suggestion...that means the client still leaks PR on every page, which doesn't help them, and I get no PR benefit from it. I'm going to try his suggestion of just having the link on the home page. However I also really like your alternative suggestion of linking to the credit page, I will test that next.

Thanks!

[Static_Shift]

Great idea Irving...I'm going to change all the footer links to only show in the homepage and see how this affects my rankings.

Thanks!

[Static_Shift]

Ok, thanks for putting me in my place I wondered whether I was being biased and you've helped me see that I am.

Sorry I've edited my question about authority sites, as I didn't explain it very well. When I say "if there are a whole bunch of authority sites with footer links", I simply mean if there are lots of websites with high PA/DA that have been designed by a web designer it's probably a good indication that they're a worthy web designer.

Do you still disagree with that when I reword the question?

I do negotiate the footer link as part of the deal. I do not expect it of anyone. All of my clients have been more than happy to advertise for me as they're happy with my services.

Last point: I don't do the footer links for it's SEO benefits, I'm doing it because I get a lot of traffic and enquiries through those links...therefore even if it doesn't help my rankings,  if it also doesn't hurt my rankings I will still want something there.

I'm going to try Irving Weiss' idea of a link only on the footer of the homepage.

[EGOL]

Your question has at least two answer perspectives.  1) the site owner, and, 2) google.

Since google has not said what they think about these links then I don't want them on my site in case google does not like them.

From a site owner's perspective I think that those links stink up the design.  They are distracting and useless to my visitors.

I know designers who are really picky about everything, yet they want me to say that odor in the footer is nice.

Irving Weiss makes some great points that I also agree with.

[irvingw]

a) If i was the owner of the site i wouldn't want to leak PR on every page even if i did like the work that was done

b) If i was the website company i wouldn't want sitewide footer links on sites which make it look like I am paying for sponsored themes

c) if the links are nofollowed, both parties lose, PR is still leaked from the owners site and benefit is not gained for the website company

I think the best solution is a dofollow homepage ONLY footer link. This is the highest PR page, usually the most traffic so good visibility for advertising,  you're not creating tons of sitewide links with identical anchor texts, and the owner is only leaking some PR on their homepage.

[NeilD]

Ok, so what you are saying is that as a website design company we shouldn't put links on client sites back to our own, whether agreed or otherwise?

[EGOL]

I think it legitimately provides value to the site visitors (that's the main aim of a website isn't it).

How many of those visitors?   0.000000001 (meaning YOU are the only visitor that gets value)?   I think that the reasoning here is weak and biased.

I also feel that if there are a whole bunch of authority sites with footer links pointing to a web design company, it's probably a pretty good sign that they're worthy of ranking high.

I don't know of any authority sites with such links.  Can you name a genuine authority site that I would know about that has such links?

**In saying this I think that the link anchor text should be branded rather than keywords. For example I usually write "Web Design by Static Shift" **

I'll agree with this.

**Am I being blinded by my bias? **

Very biased.

Thoughts aside, and onto the facts...what are people's experiences with footer links for a web design company.

I am paying the designer for doing design work.  He should not expect free advertising as part of the deal unless it is negotiated up front.  I have the attitude that the advertising should cost a lot more than the design job.

[NeilD]

I have been reading several posts on these forums about this subject. How about this...

Following on from Marcus's comments about a credit page, If the link went back to the specfic portfolio page for that client on the designer's site is that better than linking back to the root domain? If this is a good way to go what anchor text would you recommend [brand name] or [brand name | keyword] or [keyword]

Would that link still need to be a nofollow. As far as I understand it a nofollow is for a site you can't vouch for or trust implicitly, however as the website designer a link back from a client site could be a trusted link could it not? Assuming we have the client agreement of course

[CMC-SD]

I think you are being blinded by your bias, yes.

If you, the web designer, insert a link to your site into the footer of all the sites you design, that is not an editorial link. It's not a link that the site owner created of their own volition because they think it's valuable content. In fact, if a company is hiring an outside web designer, they might have no idea how to remove the link from their footer. They might not even notice it.

The search engines know all this, and it's why they don't like footer links. They are well aware that web designers, Wordpress theme developers, and so on have been using this technique for years.

[Personnel_Concept]

Its ok to do so , many seo companies put their site link in their client site's footer too!

Though, recently links in footer or other boiler plate areas like side bars etc do not get much value from Google. THough links in more prominent areas like top of the site of from text has more value

Hope that helps !

[KevinBudzynski]

I agree with Marcus. Also consider if you are also hosting the sites, they may all share the same ip address. This may be consider a link farm, but if it's nofollow and a branded term don't believe it will matter that much.

[Marcus_Miller]

If the client is okay with it, then a footer link to credit the designer is okay, but it should always be nofollowed else you risk problems. You could do it branded but if you are not looking to manipulate the results, then nofollow it. If you want some SEO benefit from this then you are trying to manipulate the results.

Give this a read:

http://wpmu.org/wordpress-penguin-google-matt-cutts/

Then this:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-wpmuorg-recovered-from-the-penguin-update

Then nofollow your credit links.

Additionally, footer links are now listed under Link Schemes in the Google Webmaster Guidelines as follows: "Widely distributed links in the footers of various sites"

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356

As an alternative, if your client is happy with it, you could always have a credit page on the site or a blog post where you get a link from the site owner and the nofollowed footer link could point to this blog post or page but I would not assume this was always okay with your clients.

Hope this helps you resist those dark link building urges that will only hurt you downstream!

Marcus