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.
Site wide footer links vs. single link for websites we design
-
I’ve been running a web design business for the past 5 years, 90% or more of the websites we build have a “web design by” link in the footer which links back to us using just our brand name or the full “web design by brand name” anchor text.
I’m fully aware that site-wide footer links arent doing me much good in terms of SEO, but what Im curious to know is could they be hurting me? More specifically I’m wondering if I should do anything about the existing links or change my ways for all new projects, currently we’re still rolling them out with the site-wide footer links.
I know that all other things being equal (1 link from 10 domains > 10 links from 1 domain) but is (1 link from 10 domains > 100 links from 10 domains)?
I’ve got a lot of branded anchor text, which balances out my exact match and partial match keyword anchors from other link building nicely. Another thing to consider is that we host many of our clients which means there are quite a few on the same server with a shared IP.
Should I?
1.) Go back into as many of the sites as I can and remove the link from all pages except the home page or a decent PA sub page- keeping a single link from the domain.
2.) Leave all the old stuff alone but start using the single link method on new sites.
3.) Scratch the site credit and just insert an exact-match anchor link in the body of the home page and hide with with CSS like my top competitor seems to be doing quite successfully. (kidding of course.... but my competitor really is doing this.)
-
We have generated new business from links that we have on client sites linking back to us. The new client will call/email us saying "we see you did example.com website, which we like, would you mind quoting for a redesign our website". Without that link we may never have got that new piece of business.
We always ask the client if we can place on link on their website and they all say ok. We don't do this for purely for SEO. The only thing we have done previously is to include the link in the footer of every page on the client site, which we are now in the process of changing to being only the client home page.
With that in mind, is the following ok to do?
-
Place text/image link in footer of client home page
-
Link to be "nofollow" which goes to specific page on our own website e.g. oursite.com/portfolio/clientname.php
-
on oursite.com/portfolio/clientname.php page we link back to client's home page, again this would be a "nofollow"
-
-
Whether you have a site-wide link with exact match keywords, or even your design company's name, this is squarely in the "over-optimization" realm. Created intentionally or not originally, it's now a best practice from an SEO perspective to eliminate site-wide links of any type pointing to a 3rd party site.
Hiding them with CSS is not recommended, as this too is potentially going to be seen as an attempt to fool people or search engines.
Purely from a "credit" perspective, if your clients are amenable to having a link to your site, it should either be on the home page footer, on the "About" page in the lower part of the content area, or another similar page.
If you have not been penalized for site-wide links, be aware that regardless of your or other people's experience at this point, it's on the radar for being targeted for its negative implications.
-
I've found it interesting reading this thread and seeing 'these' links from a different point of view. When auditing client sites I always recommend removing the web designers link from the footer (or at least from the homepage) because that link doesn't help my clients.
If you are trying to get a link from the client it is going to be much better for you if the page is thematically in line with your website. You'd need to think creatively for this because I'm sure if they had web design ability they wouldn't need your services so similar content will be tricky! A couple of ideas: Perhaps your clients have a section/page of 'random' information where you can supply a paragraph of text about your website and add the link there. Perhaps they have a cool graphic or infographic that you created and they wouldn't mind adding a paragraph under it in smaller font? Perhaps you could do a contra deal, a page about you for 2 hours labor.
But, to make a choice from your options a single homepage link is going to be more worthwhile than footer links and I wouldn't use the same anchor text for all of your links.
-
Must have been a really good TV show.
There's not much in SEO that is more fun to watch than a competitor take a hit like that. Maybe achieving rank #1 for a competitive term.
Nothing worse in SEO than taking a hit like that.
-
I appreciate the insight. I've been consistently #2, though the #1 spot bounces around quite a bit- I've had at least 5 different competitors there at one time or another. My favorite though was when the long time double-hyphen .tv domain that ranked #1 got knocked down to page 4 after Panda.
-
Having site wide links like that can look like they may have been paid for.
"I know that all other things being equal (1 link from 10 domains > 10 links from 1 domain) but is (1 link from 10 domains > 100 links from 10 domains)?"
1 link that gets relevant traffic to your site is worth more than 100 links that are not relevant to your site. It's not about how many links it's all about what type of content created that link. In other words building a natural linking profile is not link building, it's creating real content and sharing it with the right people who will help that article get real natural links.
-
#3 is the most obvious choice to implement.
All joking aside, I use to run a web design business and the majority of links I had were footer, site wide links. I still have my site up even though I do very little anymore and haven't focused on any SEO for the site in a long, long time. After the Penguin/Panda hype, I jumped from page 2 to top 3 consistently for keywords I was once targeting.
I don't know if it was just that my competitors had spammy link profiles or what, but for me in this case site wide footer links seemed to be all I needed. Take it for what you will.
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
-
Should I apply Canonical Links from my Landing Pages to Core Website Pages?
I am working on an SEO project for the website: https://wave.com.au/ There are some core website pages, which we want to target for organic traffic, like this one: https://wave.com.au/doctors/medical-specialties/anaesthetist-jobs/ Then we have basically have another version that is set up as a landing page and used for CPC campaigns. https://wave.com.au/anaesthetists/ Essentially, my question is should I apply canonical links from the landing page versions to the core website pages (especially if I know they are only utilising them for CPC campaigns) so as to push link equity/juice across? Here is the GA data from January 1 - April 30, 2019 (Behavior > Site Content > All Pages😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wavelength_International0 -
Top hierarchy pages vs footer links vs header links
Hi All, We want to change some of the linking structure on our website. I think we are repeating some non-important pages at footer menu. So I want to move them as second hierarchy level pages and bring some important pages at footer menu. But I have confusion which pages will get more influence: Top menu or bottom menu or normal pages? What is the best place to link non-important pages; so the link juice will not get diluted by passing through these. And what is the right place for "keyword-pages" which must influence our rankings for such keywords? Again one thing to notice here is we cannot highlight pages which are created in keyword perspective in top menu. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Subdomains vs directories on existing website with good search traffic
Hello everyone, I operate a website called Icy Veins (www.icy-veins.com), which gives gaming advice for World of Warcraft and Hearthstone, two titles from Blizzard Entertainment. Up until recently, we had articles for both games on the main subdomain (www.icy-veins.com), without a directory structure. The articles for World of Warcraft ended in -wow and those for Hearthstone ended in -hearthstone and that was it. We are planning to cover more games from Blizzard entertainment soon, so we hired a SEO consultant to figure out whether we should use directories (www.icy-veins.com/wow/, www.icy-veins.com/hearthstone/, etc.) or subdomains (www.icy-veins.com, wow.icy-veins.com, hearthstone.icy-veins.com). For a number of reason, the consultant was adamant that subdomains was the way to go. So, I implemented subdomains and I have 301-redirects from all the old URLs to the new ones, and after 2 weeks, the amount of search traffic we get has been slowly decreasing, as the new URLs were getting index. Now, we are getting about 20%-25% less search traffic. For example, the week before the subdomains went live we received 900,000 visits from search engines (11-17 May). This week, we only received 700,000 visits. All our new URLs are indexed, but they rank slightly lower than the old URLs used to, so I was wondering if this was something that was to be expected and that will improve in time or if I should just go for subdomains. Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | damienthivolle0 -
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.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blackrino0 -
Would it be better to Start Over vs doing a Website Migration?
Hey guys /gals I have a question please. I have a computer repair business that does extremely well in search and is on the front page of google for anything computer repair related. However, I am currently re-branding my company and have completely redesigned every aspect of the UI and the SEO Site structure as well as the fact that I have completely written vastly different content and different title tag lines and meta descriptions for each page. So basically when doing a migration we know that we want to keep our content, titles, headlines and meta descriptions the same as to not lose our page rank. Seeing that I have completely went against the grain in all directions on a much needed company re-branding and everything is completely different from the old site is it even worthwhile 301 redirecting my old urls to the new ones that would (best) correspond with the new? In the plainest English, would I do better at Ranking the New Website QUICKER without doing 301 redirects from the OLD to the NEW? In an EXTREME instance like what I have done, would the Domain Migration IMPEDED me ranking the new site seeing how nothing is the same? I have build a Rock solid SILO Site Architecture on the New site which is WordPress using the Thesis Framework and the old domain is built on JOOMLA 1.5 Thank fellas Marshall
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarshallThompson0 -
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 -
Splitting a Site into Two Sites for SEO Purposes
I have a client that owns a business that really could be easily divided into two separate business in terms of SEO. Right now his web site covers both divisions of his business. He gets about 5500 visitors a month. The majority go to one part of his business and around 600 each month go to the other. So about 11% I'm considering breaking off this 11% and putting it on an entirely different domain name. I think I could rank better for this 11%. The site would only be SEO'd for this particular division of the company. The keywords would not be in competition with each other. I would of course link the two web sites and watch that I don't run into any duplicate content issues. I worry about placing the redirects from the pages that I remove to the new pages. I know Google is not a fan of redirects. Then I also worry about the eventual drop in traffic to the main site now. How big of a factor is traffic in rankings? Other challenges include that the business services 4 major metropolitan areas. Would you do this? Have you done this? How did it work? Any suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MSWD0 -
Site Architecture: Cross Linking vs. Siloing
I'm curious to know what other mozzers think about silo's... Can we first all agree that a flat site architecture is the best practice? Relevant pages should be grouped together. Shorter, broader and (usually) therefore higher volume keywords should be towards the top of each category. Navigation should flow from general to specific. Agreed? As Google say's on page 10 of their SEO Starter Guide, "you should think about how visitors will go from a general page (your root page) to a page containing more specific content ." OK, we all agree so far, right? Great! Enter my question: Bruce Clay (among others) seem to recommend siloing as a best practice. While Richard Baxter (and many others @ SEOmoz), seem to view silos as a problem. Me? I've practiced (relevant) internal cross linking, and have intentionally avoided siloing in almost all cases. What about you? Is there a time and place to use silos? If so, when and where? If not, how do we rectify the seemingly huge differences of opinions between expert folks such as Baxter and Clay?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DonnieCooper7