Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. Digital Marketing
    3. Web Design
    4. Footer backlinks for sites I've developed

    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.

    Footer backlinks for sites I've developed

    Web Design
    6
    10
    2796
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • sanchez1960
      sanchez1960 last edited by

      I link back to my website via my company name on the footers of sites I develop.  Lately I've been changing this to my keyword and mixing and matching.  This has been done for new sites I create and old sites

      I've not seen any benefit so far after a couple of months.

      Most my clients are hosted on the same server as my main site that it links back to.

      1. Is this a bad idea to link back on the same IP?
      2. Is footer backlinks to the main developer going to annoy Google?
      3. Should I change my main site's server, will it help?

      All my competitors seem to do it and as far as I can tell they seem to get better results than I do.  Because I'm now changing them the reason I see no benefit?

      Thanks

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • AnthonyMangia
        AnthonyMangia last edited by

        Will it cause harm?  Not likely.  If Google suspects the links aren't kosher, it will probably just ignore (or "devalue") the links.

        As to whether it is a shady or manipulative practice - debatable.  From my perspective, I don't quite see how it is all that different from a company linking to its partners, suppliers, or customers.  The link represents a business relationship, and that relationship has value.  If I have a client in the position to get these kinds of links, for me it's a no brainer - get 'em.  At the very worst, they have no impact SEO-wise, but help with branding and referral traffic.  Google's perspective may differ.

        As to why the practice might not be working out so well for you - do you run linkbuilding campaigns for the websites you develop?  Does anybody?  Do many of the websites share a C class address?

        A bunch of links from websites with weak backlink profiles or the same C class addresses won't take you very far.

        BONUS - a few linkbuilding tactics guaranteed to work:

        • Submitting your website to high quality, relevant directories
        • Running a guest blogging campaign on a number of influential web design blogs
        • Creating TRULY engaging and unique content and promote it via social media
        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • RyanKent
          RyanKent @RyanKent last edited by

          @EGOL, I wholeheartedly agree. If it is an expectation, it should be shared in advance with the quote.

          @Kiran, there is not necessarily anything to do other then have your expectations set these links offer little if any value.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • kiranbajpe
            kiranbajpe @RyanKent last edited by

            What will best solution in this case. i have 400 link back from same IP. many from footer

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • GCSMasone
              GCSMasone @RyanKent last edited by

              I think that if done in a large scale these could provide a bit of value for a website if you could do it to a scale as GoDaddy recently has. Otherwise it is generally not going to add much value.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • EGOL
                EGOL @RyanKent last edited by

                Thanks!

                That's why designer/developer links will never appear in the footer of any of my sites.

                If the designer/developer expects these links it should be part of the discussion before any design contract is written... and they should feel free to quote a higher priced option for the work being done without the expectation of a link in the footer.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • RyanKent
                  RyanKent @EGOL last edited by

                  Under anything remotely normal, it is highly unlikely a search engine would consider a "website developed by EGOL Design" as a paid link. If a site owner tried a footer of "[website development], [website design], [graphic artwork], [seo] and other work performed by ABC Enterprises" where each term in brackets was a link, that clearly steps to the spammy side.

                  Even then I wouldn't necessarily call it paid links, but manipulative links which falls into the same category.

                  EGOL GCSMasone kiranbajpe RyanKent 4 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • EGOL
                    EGOL last edited by

                    Do you think that keyword links in the footer of a site might look like paid links?

                    RyanKent 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • kiranbajpe
                      kiranbajpe last edited by

                      Can we have keyword at footer to link back to our site devolved.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • RyanKent
                        RyanKent last edited by

                        It is a common practice for a site's developer to provide a self-promoting footer link in the site's they develop. There is no harm in doing so. You should not expect any noticeable value from the link either.

                        The entire concept of a valued link is an "independent vote". More specifically, it is a natural link which a user chose to provide. Links from sites you develop or host on your server are not chosen by the site owner. You choose to place the link. You could argue the site owner could choose to opt-out, but that is a another matter.

                        Google offers very low value to links in footers. Google also offers a lower value to site-wide links. Google also devalues links from sites on the same server. The bottom line is these links are not earned and you should not expect any value from search engines for them. If you build a high quality site then adding a footer link may occasionally earn your site a visit from someone interested in having their site developed. That needs to be enough for you.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                        • 1 / 1
                        • First post
                          Last post

                        Got a burning SEO question?

                        Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                        Start my free trial


                        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.

                        • See all categories

                        Related Questions

                        • calvinkj

                          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 | | calvinkj
                          0
                        • AdsposureDev

                          Why is my financial services site being flagged as gambling

                          Watchguard and Websense/Forecepoint are flagging my financial services site gambling...how can I prevent that from happening.  https://fwag.com/

                          Web Design | | AdsposureDev
                          0
                        • KempRugeLawGroup

                          Incorporating Spanish Page/Site

                          We bought an exact match domain (in Spanish) to incorporate with regular website for a particular keyword. This is our first attempt at this, and while we do have Spanish speaking staff that will translate/create a nice, quality page, we're not going to redo everything in Spanish page. Any advice on how to implement this? Do I need to create a whole other website in Spanish? Will that be duplicate content if I do? Can I just set it up to show the first page in Spanish, but if they click on anything else it redirects to our site? I'm pretty clueless on this, so if anything I've suggested is off-the-wall or a violation, I'm really just spit-balling, trying to figure out how to implement this. Thanks, Ruben

                          Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup
                          0
                        • Kingalan1

                          Lots of Listing Pages with Thin Content on Real Estate Web Site-Best to Set them to No-Index?

                          Greetings Moz Community: As a commercial real estate broker in Manhattan I run a web site with over 600 pages. Basically the pages are organized in the following categories: 1. Neighborhoods (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/neighborhoods/midtown-manhattan)  25 PAGES Low bounce rate 2. Types of Space (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/commercial-space/loft-space) 
                          15 PAGES Low bounce rate. 3. Blog (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/blog/how-long-does-leasing-process-take 
                          30 PAGES Medium/high bounce rate 4. Services (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/brokerage-services/relocate-to-new-office-space)  High bounce rate
                          3 PAGES 5. About Us (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/about-us/what-we-do
                          4 PAGES High bounce rate 6. Listings (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/listings/305-fifth-avenue-office-suite-1340sf)
                          300 PAGES High bounce rate (65%), thin content 7. Buildings (Example:http://www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/928-broadway
                          300 PAGES  Very high bounce rate (exceeding 75%) Most of the listing pages do not have more than 100 words.  My SEO firm is advising me to set them "No-Index, Follow". They believe the thin content could be hurting me. Is this an acceptable strategy? I am concerned that when Google detects 300 pages set to "No-Follow" they could interpret this as the site seeking to hide something and penalize us. Also, the building pages have a low click thru rate. Would it make sense to set them to "No-Follow" as well? Basically, would it increase authority in Google's eyes if we set pages that have thin content and/or low click thru rates to "No-Follow"? Any harm in doing this for about half the pages on the site? I might add that while I don't suffer from any manual penalty volume has gone down substantially in the last month. We upgraded the site in early June and somehow 175 pages were submitted to Google  that should not have been indexed. A removal request has been made for those pages. Prior to that we were hit by Panda in April 2012 with search volume dropping from about 7,000 per month to 3,000 per month. Volume had increased back to 4,500 by April this year only to start tanking again. It was down to 3,600 in June. About 30 toxic links were removed in late April and a disavow file was submitted with Google in late April for removal of links from 80 toxic domains. Thanks in advance for your responses!! Alan

                          Web Design | | Kingalan1
                          0
                        • DRSearchEngOpt

                          Best way to indicate multiple Lang/Locales for a site in the sitemap

                          So here is a question that may be obvious but wondering if there is some nuance here that I may be missing. Question:  Consider an ecommerce site that has multiple sites around the world but are all variations of the same thing just in different languages.  Now lets say some of these exist on just a normal .com page while others exist on different ccTLD's.  When you build out the XML Sitemap for these sites, especially the ones on the other ccTLD's, we want to ensure that using <loc>http://www.example.co.uk/en_GB/"</loc> <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
                          hreflang="en-AU"
                          href="http://www.example.com.AU/en_AU/"
                          />
                          <xhtml:link<br>rel="alternate"
                          hreflang="en-NZ"
                          href="http://www.example.co.NZ/en_NZ/"
                          /> Would be the correct way of doing this.  I know I have to change this for each different ccTLD but it just looks weird when you start putting about 10-15 different language locale variations as alternate links.  I guess I am just looking for a bit of re-affirmation I am doing this right.</xhtml:link<br></xhtml:link<br> Thanks!

                          Web Design | | DRSearchEngOpt
                          0
                        • DownPour

                          Infinite Scrolling vs. Pagination on an eCommerce Site

                          My company is looking at replacing our ecommerce site's paginated browsing with a Javascript infinite scroll function for when customers view internal search results--and possibly when they browse product categories also. Because our internal linking structure isn't very robust, I'm concerned that removing the pagination will make it harder to get the individual product pages to rank in the SERPs. We have over 5,000 products, and most of them are internally linked to from the browsing results pages in the category structure: e.g. Blue Widgets, Widgets Under $250, etc. I'm not too worried about removing pagination from the internal search results pages, but I'm concerned that doing the same for these category pages will result in de-linking the thousands of product pages that show up later in the browsing results and therefore won't be crawlable as internal links by the Googlebot. Does anyone have any ideas on what to do here? I'm already arguing against the infinite scroll, but we're a fairly design-driven company and any ammunition or alternatives would really help. For example, would serving a different page to the Googlebot in this case be a dangerous form of cloaking? (If the only difference is the presence of the pagination links.) Or is there any way to make rel=next and rel=prev tags work with infinite scrolling?

                          Web Design | | DownPour
                          0
                        • iprosoftware

                          Footer Links Good or bad?

                          Hi Can anyone answer this question confidently, I know Google is moving away from lots of links within the footer.  However we specialise in websites for the travel industry and having a link to all the areas at the footer can be quite handy.  Our websites complete this automatically. Here is an example where due to design of the site the links don't quite fit well, so we need to change anyway.  But before completing the work I wondered if there was a better way to do this. http://www.dreamvillasitaly.com/ Many thanks Andy

                          Web Design | | iprosoftware
                          0
                        • zharriet

                          Separate .mobi site or make .com site mobile friendly?

                          Our website now has enough mobile traffic to justify going mobile friendly, which it is not at this time. I am in favor of making a separate .mobi site designed specifically for mobile phones and smart phones for several reasons. It is cheaper, faster, and easier to accomplish. I think our mobile users will have a good experience though obviously not as much info as our full site. I would use ourdomain.mobi with link or a redirect for mobile users from from the main site. My top three choices for implementing that are http://allwebcodesign.com/setup/mobi-templates.htm#detailsarea
                          Template that can be viewed by mobile or desktop. http://www.onbile.com/ http://www.networksolutions.com/mobile-website/index.jsp Does this seem like a good solution?

                          Web Design | | zharriet
                          1

                        Get started with Moz Pro!

                        Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                        Start my free trial
                        Products
                        • Moz Pro
                        • Moz Local
                        • Moz API
                        • Moz Data
                        • STAT
                        • Product Updates
                        Moz Solutions
                        • SMB Solutions
                        • Agency Solutions
                        • Enterprise Solutions
                        Free SEO Tools
                        • Domain Authority Checker
                        • Link Explorer
                        • Keyword Explorer
                        • Competitive Research
                        • Brand Authority Checker
                        • Local Citation Checker
                        • MozBar Extension
                        • MozCast
                        Resources
                        • Blog
                        • SEO Learning Center
                        • Help Hub
                        • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                        • How-to Guides
                        • Moz Academy
                        • API Docs
                        About Moz
                        • About
                        • Team
                        • Careers
                        • Contact
                        Why Moz
                        • Case Studies
                        • Testimonials
                        Get Involved
                        • Become an Affiliate
                        • MozCon
                        • Webinars
                        • Practical Marketer Series
                        • MozPod
                        Connect with us

                        Contact the Help team

                        Join our newsletter
                        Moz logo
                        © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                        • Accessibility
                        • Terms of Use
                        • Privacy

                        Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.