Footer Back Links Question "Site by built by"

[yousayjump]

Hi all

I design and develop websites for clients within the UK.  With each website I build, I always add a link to the footer of the website which links back to my website.

I have always used the link anchor text "Site By Jump" but then decided to try to use the link anchor text to our benefit by changing the links across all of our portfolio of sites to be:

"Graphic Design by Jump"
or
"Web Design by Jump"

In the hope that this helped us rank better for those keyword phrases.

Now something occurred to me the day.  Most of the websites I build have no relevance to the content on our website.  For example, I could build a website for Baby Food and add a backlink to our homepage which doesn't even mention the words "baby food".

In some cases, the websites can have thousands of pages, each with this footer link appearing at the bottom of each page.

My question is, could these backlinks potentially be seen as black hat or spam to a search engine? I.e. thousands of backlinks from websites that have no relevance in terms of content all linking back to my homepage?

Thank you for reading and any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[JustinTaylor88]

We have taken the view that we will leave our "site by" links alone, we are ranking well for key phrases and the danger being that changing these links will affect it.

That said, we have removed links from some client websites with poor DA and PR as a precaution and it doesn't seem to have done us any harm, in fact i think it may have improved SERPs on a few keywords, but a little early to say for sure.

[yousayjump]

And if we only knew what that tipping point was!

Thanks for the advice.

[Maximise]

Sure, it's a tough decision as you never know how close you are to a penalty unfortunately.

I wouldn't go about changing the existing links on clients sites if you'r still ranking for these terms now but keep this in mind for any new links you acquire. Maybe link with just your brand name for most of them and then throw in the odd anchor text variation every now and then. You just need to avoid a tipping point where your profile starts to look suspicious.

[yousayjump]

Thanks for the advice Maximise.

The only issue with that is that we know from our analytics that visitors do actually find us by searching for some of the exact keyphrases we have in our back link anchor text.  Just searching for (for example) "Web Designers UK" (or variations of that) is so saturated we long tail it or localise it which wins us clients.  By removing the link from the "Web Design" part of the footer link I would be afraid that this would in time have a detrimental effect on our rankings for those search phrases.

I guess if we leave it as it is then there is always that risk that we could get a penalty anyway...

[yousayjump]

Hi Nathan

Do you link from every page on the sites you build or just the homepage?

I watched a Matt Cutts video the other day (<cite class="kv">www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0fgh5RIHdE)</cite> in which he explains that footer links get weighted less than links that are generally surrounded by page copy which I can understand but I was wondering if the sheer volume of these footer links, on a large site, all with the same anchor text could be seen as spammy?

I know we may never actually be 100% sure if they do or not but any thoughts or suggestions of members would be appreciated.

[Maximise]

It sounds like many are concerned about this issue recently. It's a definite possibility that you could get an over optimisation penalty for the anchor text match and you could stop ranking for that term. I think the strategy going forward is probably to link back using your brand name or url only. If possible it would also be better if you can find a place for the link on your clients site that is not part of the main template so it doesn't cause a site wide link.

Consider changing your link to something like this:

Web Design by Jump

[nate99]

I understand completely what you are saying.  I own a design firm in Atlanta, Georgia and we do a similar tactic. I personally, think it is important to vary your keywords you are targeting.  It may look fishy that all your back links are keywords for web design.

A back-link from a site serves more of a purpose then just keywords.  If the site receives a lot of traffic and people love the design they may click the link to see who designed it.  We use the following anchor text " Powered By, Atlanta Small Business Web Design, Small Business Web Design,  Developed By, Designed By and our link www.treelifedesigns.com