Over Optimization & Footer Links for Crediting Web Design to a Company
-
With the recent updates to the algorithm having to do with link networks and over optimization it has got me to thinking about the footer links we add to each site that we build and do web design for linking back to ours. I could certainly see how Google could make the assumption that these are all on the same server, pointing back to one main site, and penalize us for that. Should we no=follow these links? They may say something like, "Website Designed By: Company Name". They do provide a valuable source to some extent of traffic to the site from people interested in our designs. Any thoughts?
-
These links are not editorial earned but I have mixed feelings about them, here's why:
I don't have a problem when a designer ads one text or image link with their brand name in the footer, as long as the client is happy with it. If you've designed an awesome site that link may act as lead gen.
However, I have noticed designers getting a bit crazy with this and adding multiple (2,3,4 more) keyword rich text links (web design, web development, web deigners location etc etc) in footers which I really do have a problem with as they are only there for one reason. It looks spammy on the client's site and may actually get their site penalised.
-
I just asked a similar question here :
(I didn't see this existing topic)
The advice I received was :
-
Use only your brand name in anchor text when linking from client websites
-
A single link from a clients home page is probably better than linking from every page.
-
-
Just found an interesting post in webmaster world that kinda answers how Google may feel about these typs of links.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4445558.htm
This is going to mess up a lot of Web Design firms if they start to enforce this.
-
Dan, thanks for getting involved in the discussion. It is funny that most design firms carry out this practice and I have never heard it discussed before. I will have to look into using a micro format for this as I had not thought about that before. I guess we will soon find out what role that plays in appears as part of a "link scheme" or not with the new update rolling out soon. Thanks again.
-
I have always been curious as to how the SE's treat this. Yes, it is probably not a good idea if you are hosted on the same server as the rest of your client's websites, but looking at the current proposed changes as to what may possibly be a penalty, I think that it wouldn't matter much where they are hosted.
I am really interested if anyone has any suggestions or thoughts on a way to give a creative credit to the organization that created the design or creative work i.e) "website design by company " using a micro format or HTML tag.
If the word coming down the pipe is a concentration on natural optimization, then calling a brown dog, a brown dog so to speak by using the proper citation would never be spammy. So linking to your website with "website design by company" shouldn't be penalized, nor should it require a no-follow if it is citing the creative origin, right? Am I making sense, it would be no different than an Author citation.
Reading on this topic today made me think about this, so what would be the most appropriate, a micro-format or some other tag? IDK, but if I come to a conclusion, you will be the first to know.
-
In that case, I would not sweat over it. If you think about it, companies can't control who links to them. Imagine all those Wordpress, Blogspot Blogs, which have a sitewide blogroll. If a mommy blogger created a blog 5 years ago and linked to Disney.com for example, and now she does not even remember that she created a blog...what can Disney.com do about it and they are all from username.wordpress.com kind of URLs, so all from the same IP.
Anyways, long story short, all kinds of links...add up to become a natural link profile. For Web Design companies, this is fairly common in my opinion and good news is that you are using brand as a keyword, so I don't think there's something to be worried about. Going forward, if I were you, I would nofollow the links. But leave the old ones as is unless there's an issue in which case you could add nofollow to those existing links as well.
-
1. Yes
2. No, they only link to our main web design/seo site. Not us to them except in some cases where we have a case study for example.
3.Not as many as we would like But to honestly answer your question I would say say our clients make up 1/2 of our link profile and many of them are in the global footer so are sitewide.
4. Probably 20 sites right now
We are only using branded company name in anchor text. Thanks for the feedback.
-
I would ask you the following questions:
- Are all the client sites on the same server ?
- Do you have a clients page where you link back to each of your clients ?
- How does your link profile look ? Do you have lots of other links ?
- How many client sites are we talking ? 10/20/50/500/1000 ? And then how would you compare them to the total links you have ?
If your link profile is mostly natural, I wouldn't worry about it that much. But going forward you could nofollow them. Also, what's the anchor text in your links ? Your Company Name or Website Designed ? Do more of Brand Name, combined with Anchor Text. So all sorts of variations. Do not make them consistent.
I hope that helps.
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
-
Mobile-First Indexing New Site monetized with Adsense AMP or not?
I am considering developing a new site monetized with Adsense. I am wondering if it's still worth bothering with AMP, it will take some work to get the functionality I have in mind working on these pages due to the inherent limitations. Has anyone got any insights in terms of current and future benefits of AMP in terms of ranking benefits and Adsense earning potential?
Web Design | | GrouchyKids0 -
Does Designing in Sigma Reduce Coding Costs
A design service is using Figma to create modified form. Once the design is complete, Sigma will export CSS files. If we provide these CSS files to a coder, will this greatly reduce the required time to implement the. design on our website? Our website is designed. with a modified real estate theme. We are using exactly the same fields and functionality of the previous form. We are seeking to reduce coding time and subsequent costs. Thanks,
Web Design | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
So apparently SEO moz will get us de-indexed according to a SEO company!
Each and every day i get called up from an SEO company who promises to get me top spots in Google rankings if i quickly get on their special offer they have today normally i would say "no thanks and put the phone down" but i had a bit of spare time so i indulged the guy and we got talking. After the introductions and speal about his company he was showing me what his company does and how they go about it to get me top ranks (they don't get me ranks but create a website they own which then passes leads to me- kinda clever since they could then start charging me per lead or my competitors) We continued to talk and i mentioned i used SEOmoz to check my rankings and back links etc and he told me that Google are cracking down and anyone using these types of software/websites will get their websites de indexed. This struck me as BS but i wanted to get your thoughts on the matter, i personally don't believe Google would ever do such a thing as this since it would be so easy to get your competitors websites taken down (i.e. negative seo) but its certainly a talking point.
Web Design | | GarethEJones0 -
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 -
Japanese & Mandarin Fonts
A client is looking to translate PDFs on their website into Japanese & Mandarin fonts. I found this resource: http://www.vistawide.com/languages/foreign_language_fonts2.htm I'm not sure about the quality. This is a call for any international font designers/experts for input. Any suggestions or resources?
Web Design | | DanaLookadoo0 -
Sub-pages with more links than homepage - bad?
Hi,
Web Design | | rayvensoft
I am working on merging a number of my niche websites into a larger site (301 redirects, phased in over a few months). My question/concern is whether google will penalize the main site when it sees that the homepage has almost no links to it, and that about 10-15 sub-pages have a lot of links back to it. Does anybody have experience with this kind of scenario? Will it create a problem? Theoretically I could spend a year or so building up links to the new main page - building the brand - before doing the 301's. The smaller pages still bring in clients, but it is getting hard to maintain that many micro sites. Thanks in advance for any help.0 -
Which is the Best Web Hosting Company?
Which web hosting company is the best to use for SEO purposes? Also which company has the best cost and value?
Web Design | | bronxpad1 -
Too Many On-Page Links for my Blog
Hi, I have created a SEO Moz campaign for my travel blog www.EspaceVoyage.net. The Crawl diagnostics tool raised a warning saying that for few pages I have a 'Too many on-page links'. All the problematic pages are of the following style: http://www.espacevoyage.net/2008/08/01/ http://www.espacevoyage.net/2008/08/02/ http://www.espacevoyage.net/2008/08/06/ .... I am not sure what I should do with that ... Since I continue to publish articles on that blog I imagine that that problem will keep growing and growing ... What should I do with that? Thanks P.S. That blog uses Wordpress CMS. Nancy
Web Design | | EnigmaSolution0