Avoiding the penguin slap in the face.
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I work with a web design / SEO company and when we complete a site we want the credit for it, a link at the bottom of the page we build does suffice... Problem is this causes irrelevant linking / unnatural linking. If we "nofollow" these are we ducking the penguin? Are we better off not linking at all?
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I agree that it certainly should be discussed in advance, but to me it seems petty. It is as if you are saying to the client that their money wasn't enough.
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Lots of designers and developers believe that they are entitled to these attribution links and insist upon them being on the sites that they produce.
I think that this is something that should be discussed in advance with the client. I believe that it is the client's call because it is his website. In fact, there are some sites that are important enough or have enough traffic (or linkjuice) that the designer should pay huge money to have those links appear on the client site.
I know that plenty of designers will disagree strongly with this.
When I see an SEO's links in the footer of a client site I really shake my head. I think that it is pretty sleezy to be sucking the linkjuice from client sites when instead they should be trying to get linkjuice flowing INTO those site.
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Nofollowing them is fine, but honestly I think that links back are very tacky. You can always take credit via comments in the code, but an exposed link just doesn't make much sense. Advertising companies don't put their names on commercials, construction companies don't leave their names on your house, and web developers shouldn't leave their links on their clients' sites.
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