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.
Credit Links on Client Websites
-
I know there have been several people who have asked this but a lot of them were back in 2012 before many of the google changes. My question is the same though.
With all the changes with Google's algorithm. Is it okay to put your link on the bottom of your clients website. Like Web Design by, etc. Part of the reason is to drive traffic but also if someone is actually interested who designed the website, they will click it. But now reading about how bad links can hurt you tremendously, it makes me second guess if this is ok. My gut feeling says, no.
-
I would look more for a site that has a squeaky-clean profile of its own (both in terms of its inbound and outbound links), has an appropriate page to link to you from and (for extra credit) is perhaps marginally related to your business (also in tech, for instance), rather than go on its numbers and try to shoe-horn a link in there, if that makes sense.
-
Thanks Jane! Out of curiosity, what do you consider a strong domain/page authority in order to get a link from it?
-
Given how strict Google is about footer links (with fairly good reason; they have been abused badly so often that footer links with good intentions get swept up in the mix), I would nofollow those links if you wish to keep them because they've brought you qualified traffic.
If the client site is otherwise quite strong, consider looking for another location to link from in a way that seems editorially-chosen and "natural". It's unfortunate that footer links have become so "poisonous", but they truly are best avoided or nofollowed.
-
Yeah makes sense. I guess the answer is to take them off all together! Or put them on the homepage with nofollow and only on the homepage.
-
then you could always be cheeky and if you still have writes to edit the website remove the "nofollow", but as Moz said in there Whiteboard Friday, these are seen as spammy links in the footer - not great SEO tactics.
I guess its a debate about getting footer links and ranking in google in the short term to long term benefits of creating more natural links.
Also they said Sitewide links as not great SEO and a link in the footer is usually site wide - so its 2/5 of the bad SEO steps. My gut feeling would be not to do them in the long term you will probably be peanlised, but in the short term you need to make a living.
If this is part of a larger SEO plan maybe include a few links in certain website footers, but with the long term plan of doing none and work on writing interesting, exciting content people naturally link to, but make sure its not the only way you are getting links to your site as you risk losing all your natural rankings.
-
What if the client has awesome SEO themselves and a high domain authority etc.
-
If you watch the whiteboard Friday from last week:
http://moz.com/blog/the-rules-of-link-building-whiteboard-friday
rule number 4 is don't link to external links in the footer. Hence linking to your website is external link building - but that said sometimes it is useful to find out who built the website.
My advice would be to put the link in - but as "nofollow" link - therefore you can still hopefully generate any sales from people who liked your site build skills, but avoid getting your own site penalised in Google.
Plus if the site you designed did any bad SEO tricks and get themselves penalised you don't suffer - I guess once you have built the site you have very little control over there SEO tricks and they might go for quick win black hat SEO tricks and you wouldn't want to get down ranked for something that is out of your control - nofollow would resolve all the potential issues, but wouldn't affect sales
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
-
How Many Links to Disavow at Once When Link Profile is Very Spammy?
We are using link detox (Link Research Tools) to evaluate our domain for bad links. We ran a Domain-wide Link Detox Risk report. The reports showed a "High Domain DETOX RISK" with the following results: -42% (292) of backlinks with a high or above average detox risk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
-8% (52) of backlinks with an average of below above average detox risk
-12% (81) of backlinks with a low or very low detox risk
-38% (264) of backlinks were reported as disavowed. This look like a pretty bad link profile. Additionally, more than 500 of the 689 backlinks are "404 Not Found", "403 Forbidden", "410 Gone", "503 Service Unavailable". Is it safe to disavow these? Could Google be penalizing us for them> I would like to disavow the bad links, however my concern is that there are so few good links that removing bad links will kill link juice and really damage our ranking and traffic. The site still ranks for terms that are not very competitive. We receive about 230 organic visits a week. Assuming we need to disavow about 292 links, would it be safer to disavow 25 per month while we are building new links so we do not radically shift the link profile all at once? Also, many of the bad links are 404 errors or page not found errors. Would it be OK to run a disavow of these all at once? Any risk to that? Would we be better just to build links and leave the bad links ups? Alternatively, would disavowing the bad links potentially help our traffic? It just seems risky because the overwhelming majority of links are bad.0 -
If I nofollow outbound external links to minimize link juice loss > is it a good/bad thing?
OK, imagine you have a blog, and you want to make each blog post authoritative so you link out to authority relevant websites for reference. In this case it is two external links per blog post, one to an authority website for reference and one to flickr for photo credit. And one internal link to another part of the website like the buy-now page or a related internal blog post. Now tell me if this is a good or bad idea. What if you nofollow the external links and leave the internal link untouched so all internal links are dofollow. The thinking is this minimizes loss of link juice from external links and keeps it flowing through internal links to pages within the website. Would it be a good idea to lay off the nofollow tag and leave all as do follow? or would this be a good way to link out to authority sites but keep the link juice internal? Your thoughts are welcome. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rich_Coffman0 -
Link Brokers Yes or No?
We have a client who has asked us to talk to link brokers to speed up the back linking process. Although I've been aware of them for ages I have never openly discussed the possible use of 'buying' links or engaging in that part of the industry. Do they have a place in SEO and if so what is the MOZ communities thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
Moving half my website to a new website: 301?
Good Morning! We currently have two websites which are driving all of our traffic. Our end goal is to combine the two and fold them into each other. Can I redirect the duplicate content from one domain to our main domain even though the URL's are different. Ill give an example below. (The domains are not the real domains). The CEO does not want to remove the other website entirely yet, but is willing to begin some sort of consolidation process. ABCaddiction.com is the main domain which covers everything from drug addiction to dual diagnosis treatment. ABCdualdiagnosis.com is our secondary website which covers everything as well. Can I redirect the entire drug addiction half of the website to ABCaddiction.com? With the eventual goal of moving everything together.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
URL Value: Menu Links vs Body Content Links
Hi All, I'm a little confused. I have read a number of articles from authority sites that give mixed signals over the importance of menu links vs body content links. It is suggested that whilst all menu links spread link juice equally, Google does not see them as favourably. Inserting a link within the body will add more link juice value to the desired page. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch0 -
How to find affiliate sites linking to a competitor website?
Hello here, I am trying to understand the best way to find sites that are affiliate of a competitor, through link research. Typically our competitor's affiliates link to our competitor website via any of the following links: http://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/ard.asp?SID=[aff_id]&LID=[link_id] http://click.linksynergy.com/link?id=[aff+id]&offerid=[off_id]&type=2&murl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.musicnotes.com%2Fsheetmusic%2Fmtd.asp%3Fppn%3D[item_id] The first link looks much easier to find, so I have tried to find the first kind of links with Google by using the "link:" clause as follows: link:http://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/ard.asp Or, similarly, by using Open Site Explorer. But I always get 0 results! It is weird because I know there are thousands of affiliates out there with the same tracking code. How's that possible? Why does it look impossible to find the sites I am looking for? Would you suggest any different approach? Any ideas, suggestions and thoughts are very welcome! Thank you in advance. Fab.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Links from new sites with no link juice
Hi Guys, Do backlinks from a bunch of new sites pass any value to our site? I've heard a lot from some "SEO experts" say that it is an effective link building strategy to build a bunch of new sites and link them to our main site. I highly doubt that... To me, a new site is a new site, which means it won't have any backlinks in the beginning (most likely), so a backlink from this site won't pass too much link juice. Right? In my humble opinion this is not a good strategy any more...if you build new sites for the sake of getting links. This is just wrong. But, if you do have some unique content and you want to share with others on that particular topic, then you can definitely create a blog and write content and start getting links. And over time, the domain authority will increase, then a backlink from this site will become more valuable? I am not a SEO expert myself, so I am eager to hear your thoughts. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | witmartmarketing0 -
One Way Links vs Two Way Links
Hi, Was speaking to a client today and got asked how damaging two way links are. i.e. domaina.com links to domainb.com and domainb.com links back to domaina.com. I need a nice simple layman's explanation of if/how damaging they are compared to one way links. And please don't answer with you lose link juice as I have a job explaining link juice.... I am explaining things to a non techie! Thank you!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0
