Footer Links for Design Shops - Do They Help or Hurt?
-
I work on SEO for a number of clients at our agency, including our in-house SEO for our own website. I use Open Site Explorer all the time to analyze my competition in the SERPs and try to gain links from this insight. However, I've noticed a number of agencies and design shops that place a link in the footer of websites they've designed and created. For example "Site design by ABC Agency (hyperlinked to the agency's home page). Or I've seen small logos or graphics that link to the designer's site and use the "alt tag" to get stronger anchor text. From a design perspective, I don't care for this, but as a SEO...I can see why.
We've designed a number of websites and have more in the pipeline, but have not used this tactic before. It seems like an irrelevant link from a content/user standpoint, however, it seems to work for a lot of agencies and design shops. Any input from the SEOmoz community would be great. Is it a short-lived strategy? Does it help or hurt your link-building and "rapport" with Google, Bing, Yahoo?
Thanks everyone.
-
author meta - no
footer link - yes
-
Now conversly to this. If you were auditing a client's website would you reccomend removal of an Author Meta Tag and Footer link...
-
EGOL - we could pretty much bet our lives on you being correct. A large corporate site would be crazy to hire freelancers ($$$). They surely have a staff of W2 employees or, at the very least, an outsource consisting of staff employees. Successful corporations are into "team spirit" motivationals and like direct contact and control of people collaborating on their public image.
-
I had an epphany on footer links. Since I specialize in business broker sites it dawned on me Ithere is a relevancy issue - business broker to web design is a mismatch.
What I did was create a couple of "business broker specialty" pages, then worded the anchor text accordingly. The pages quickly attained individual rank and I started getting more response forms.
In addition to creating relevancy I also let them know I know about their business. I generally do SEO as part of a site rebuild.
-
Cool, thanks again winlynxtp.
-
One last note here, you are speaking about publicly traded companies with Nike, Best Buy, etc... These companies have a dedicated staff that work on the site all the time. They are not going to put on the front page of their site, last updated by Robert Smith. I also agree about the fee, I usually deduct it from the cost of the site design similar to how construction companies give you a discount for putting a sign in your yard. You can also use the Author meta tag.
-
You don't see those footer links on sites for Nike, Medtronic, Best Buy, etc.
I agree. I think that some of these companies have in-house talent or they address the "signature links" before the design contract is awarded.
In my opinion, the designer is still a "winner" if he/she can post... "I designed Nike or BestBuy" in their personal portfolio.
When you think of the value that such a link would have (as on Nike), the designer should be willing to do the work for free and pay a monthly fee for the link to be displayed. (just taking the opposite perspective).
-
The "tagline" as you put it is not really a tagline but we will use it. It may not be seen by users but Google will see it.
-
Design is design, I guess you feel your work is not as important as an artist, not my problem. Someone doesn't want my links they don't get it but usually after design they want to brag of my work to their friends. But us younger folks use the internet for our reputation not the newpaper.
-
Great point. And that's why I reached out to the community on this one. Because we're an agency, we can frequently update our work portfolio on our website and blog, which if I'm doing my job, organic traffic from targeted keywords will bring visitors that might convert into new clients. Thanks for the reply and great recommendation!
-
Thanks EGOL. It's obvious as a way to build a lot of links quickly if a company is designing/programming a lot of websites. Also, and this is speculation, but it seems like a lot of design firms are not asking client permission for a link, and subtly add it to the bottom as if it's a standard. Nonetheless, we're a hybrid agency that does design and programming, as well as SEO, so it's warranted I suppose to "mark" our work, but at the same time it still seems like it can "cheapen" a website. You don't see those footer links on sites for Nike, Medtronic, Best Buy, etc.
Thanks again for the insight. Always curious to hear what other SEOmoz'rs think about this stuff. There's a lot of website design/dev in our future so I wanted to check with the community. Cheers!
-
If your design company site is ranking well you can get more value from good strong testimonials on your site than a signature line on site your customers may never find. Take the example that you do a fantastic job on a site to promote kid's books. Someone looking for a good designer for their speed boat site is more likely to read a testimonial on your site than see your tagline on the book site. You gain value by human viewers being able to read what others are saying about your work on a diverse range of sites.
If I am hiring a designer, I do not want one that has worked on a competitor's website so I would search google for designers not look at design by tag lines on competitor's sites.
It comes down to whether you want your two minutes of fame on every site you do or a valuable marketing resource such as testimonials.
-
Thanks for the feedback. It's definitely a fast way to build a lot of links if web design and/or programming is a company's capability. Just wanted to be sure these links weren't going to hurt my SEO. Cheers.
-
I can understand why some designers want to have a "signature" on their work. It is somewhat of a custom for an artist to sign his/her work and that custom seems to creep into web design. A lot of designers are really adamant about that link and do not want to give it up even if the website owner is willing to pay extra. In my opinion this is something that the designer and the client should agree upon before work begins.
I have a very different reaction when I see an SEO company link in the footer of a client site. I know exactly why they want that link.
Why should I hire an SEO who does that? Any SEO who is proud of his work should not be sucking the linkjuice out of his client's websites. He is being paid to do the opposite and do that job in a stealthy manner.
-
It is a backlink so yes, it is helpful, in the footer in my opinion very helpful. Then It started off as being helpful to add html links to the bottom of the page so when listed with Google, Google would include the pages in the search results, now called Sitelinks. This has evolved and if you use a CMS like Joomla or Wordpress can easily be distinguished without them. It is appropriate to allow the company working on your site to include designed by.... I will use it to boost the keyword I want. For example say I want to rank higher for Indianapolis Website Design over the next 3 months, I will start including it and link to the site design page of my site.
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
-
Does changing content and design of the website gonna affect my all the backlinks i have made till now
i have been working on my link profile for a month now, after learning about 5 step moz methodology i have decided that i would like to change all of the content of my site and taylor it to what my customers need, am i gonna loose all the domain authority if make changes? if it gonna affect, hows that gonna come out
Web Design | | calvinkj0 -
Referring subdirectory pages from 3rd hierarchy level pages. Will this hurts?
Hi all, We have product feature pages at 3rd tier like website.com/product/features. We have the help guides for each of these features on a different subdirectory like website.com/help/guides. We are linking these help guides from every page of features. So, will it hurts us anywhere just because we are encouraging 4th tier pages in website, moreover they are from different sub-directory. Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Https pages indexed but all web pages are http - please can you offer some help?
Dear Moz Community, Please could you see what you think and offer some definite steps or advice.. I contacted the host provider and his initial thought was that WordPress was causing the https problem ?: eg when an https version of a page is called, things like videos and media don't always show up. A SSL certificate that is attached to a website, can allow pages to load over https. The host said that there is no active configured SSL it's just waiting as part of the hosting package just in case, but I found that the SSL certificate is still showing up during a crawl.It's important to eliminate the https problem before external backlinks link to any of the unwanted https pages that are currently indexed. Luckily I haven't started any intense backlinking work yet, and any links I have posted in search land have all been http version.I checked a few more url's to see if it’s necessary to create a permanent redirect from https to http. For example, I tried requesting domain.co.uk using the https:// and the https:// page loaded instead of redirecting automatically to http prefix version. I know that if I am automatically redirected to the http:// version of the page, then that is the way it should be. Search engines and visitors will stay on the http version of the site and not get lost anywhere in https. This also helps to eliminate duplicate content and to preserve link juice. What are your thoughts regarding that?As I understand it, most server configurations should redirect by default when https isn’t configured, and from my experience I’ve seen cases where pages requested via https return the default server page, a 404 error, or duplicate content. So I'm confused as to where to take this.One suggestion would be to disable all https since there is no need to have any traces to SSL when the site is even crawled ?. I don't want to enable https in the htaccess only to then create a https to http rewrite rule; https shouldn't even be a crawlable function of the site at all.RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTPS} offor to disable the SSL completely for now until it becomes a necessity for the website.I would really welcome your thoughts as I'm really stuck as to what to do for the best, short term and long term.Kind Regards
Web Design | | SEOguy10 -
Spanish website indexed in English, redirect to spanish or english version if i do a new website design?
Hi MOZ users, i have this problem. We have a website in Spanish Language but Google crawls it on English (it is not important the reasons). We re made the entire website and now we are planning the move. The new website will have different language versions, english, spanish and portuguese. Somebody tells me that we have to redirect the old urls (crawled on english) to the new english versions, not to the spanish (the real language of the firsts). Example: URL1 Language: Spanish - Crawled on English --> redirect to Language English version. the other option will be redirect to the spanish new version, which the visitor is waiting to find. URL1 Language: Spanish - Crawled on English --> redirect to Language Spanish version. What do you think? Which is the better option?
Web Design | | NachoRetta0 -
Link juice passing from a .org.uk link to a .org/uk websites
Hi all, A client I am working on had a CMS built in recently which has resulted in all their canonicals tags being taken off the website, and as such the same page with both a .org/uk and .org.uk/uk domain have appeared in the search results and I am wondering what your guys take is on the best cause of action. For further background: Historically they have always used .org.uk/uk (not sure why) for their UK website and used .org/xxx for other countries (they also have a .org splashpage FYI). Having seen the .org/uk pages, and knowing they have to choose one to avoid duplication, they would like to move their uk website to the .org/uk domain to fit in with the rest of the divisions. However due to the historical use of .org.uk/uk their backlink profile contains links to both the .org.uk and .org domains. My question then: would a canonical tag on all the .org.uk/uk pages pointing to the .org/uk pages be strong enough to pass on link juice to the .org/uk pages (from all links pointing to .org.uk) or would a 301 redirect be required in this instance, or indeed would it be best to stay with the .org.uk/uk domain? Thanks, Diana
Web Design | | Diana.varbanescu0 -
New Website Redesign: Any Design Comments or SEO Suggestions?
Hi! We recently launched our new website after MONTHS of work. Now that it is live, we are looking to fine tune the design and SEO efforts. This is our new website. And for reference, this is our old website. Any and all comments on design and SEO would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your help! Mike
Web Design | | Mike.Goracke0 -
Footer Links For Web Design Agencies - Bad?
So today Google have updated their Webmaster Guidelines and they have drawn particular attention to their update relating to Link Schemes. http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356 Unless you have had your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears since February then most people are aware of the types of link schemes that the updated is refering to but there is one area that isn't so black and white for me. "Here are a few common examples of unnatural links that violate our guidelines: Widely distributed links in the footers of various sites" We are a design agency and we design and build lots of websites for our clients. It is pretty standard practice for agencies to add a credit to the footer of websites and we pick up a lot of work from people that see a site that they like and click through the footer link to our site. Our footer credit is standard on all of the websites that we create:- Website by Teapot Creative Only the 'Teapot Creative' part of the credit is anchor text so we are only linking using our brand name with no intention of manipulating search results. Is this going to hurt us? or will the fact that we are only linking using our branded term and without any SEO intent keep us in the clear? Thanks.
Web Design | | AdeLewis
Ade.0 -
Where to find high quality (affordable) web designers?
Hi everyone, I am looking for find high quality web designers that are affordable. I am open to many options. There are several things I have looked into. 1. I have looked for designers via CSS galleries, but I don't really know how to get in touch with designers or find them. Rand recently talked about this in a webinar, but if anyone has specific insights on how to find people this way, please let me know. 2. I have also looked into website design contests from sites such as: DesignCrowd.com 99designs.com CrowdSpring.com DesignContest.com I haven't used these services and I was wondering if anyone has experience with design contests. 3. I have looked into the option of hiring a freelancer on oDesk or a similar freelancer site. I don't really know the cost, how to find a good designer, how to avoid inexperienced but cheap designers and all the other such roadblocks that come along with freelancers. If anyone could provide insight into this, it would be greatly appreciated.
Web Design | | alexhoug0