How Can I Outlink Web Designer Link Building from Their Clients' Footer
-
_I used open site explorer to view the backlinks for a competitor of an agency I work with. They have ten times as many links, if not more, than we do, and I noticed there were only a few more domains linking back to them. As I dug deeper I noticed these links were coming from the footer tag they put on their clients' sites like "Site Designed by __." If a site had 20 pages, they had 20 links back...weird and annoying that it counts.
They have more clients for web design than we do, so their bulk linking could continue to outrank us. Any suggestions on how we can outrank them locally? We are in the midst of redesigning our entire site to build out more pages and have much better internal linking.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks everyone!
-
Nofollow links still pass some authority, but no where near an in body link. I commented on blogs like Website Magazine, and a few other real high authority blogs. I just used my actual name, and didn't try optimize the link.
Ranking for web design is definitely a little different because of inflated numbers. You should also keep in my that link analysis tools, like Moz and Majestic, don't find every link on the internet, and can take a while to discover some links. Always take these stats with a grain of salt, and focus on getting quality links.
If you are working local you can always try identify links pages in your area. I was able to get one from a couple historical societies and a mall just by asking for it. You can also have a link in your signature on forums, but try to limit these since too many would look spammy.
-
It is very frustrating when you see something like that - things you know are "wrong" but a competitor gets away with it.
I am going to skip the whole preaching about "don't worry too much about competitors or what they do" thing, and point out that if you are going to count/compare links, it is best to look at number of linking domains rather than total links.
100 sitewide footer credit links from one site is not really the same as 100 links from 100 different sites.
-
Thanks for the quick reply Who Wudda Thunk. You said you used just a handful of nofollow links, which sounds contradictory to me. Were these links in comment sections of high profile sites, forums, or simply in-body links from high ranking blogs/news sites?
Sorry I sound oblivious, but this is the first time I ran into an issue with the footer links. I usually go against other local small businesses that I can outrank.
-
Matt Cutts has talked about the diminishing returns of multiple links from a single domain. His video says that anything after 2 gets to be pretty minimal.
The other thing you need to consider is that site wide footer links aren't as strong as an in body link. If you are doing your part to get legitimate in body links, through interviews or contributing to a blog in some way, then you are going to get farther than these site wides.
I ran into a similar problem with one of my sites. I was up against a dozen web designers who have built hundreds of websites, but I was able to outrank them with just a handful of nofollow links. They weren't great at on site SEO, which helped, but I knew that a lot of these links weren't worth much.
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
-
We're merging 2 separate websites into 1 but need to ideally rank service pages for both locations
I have a dilemma, we're merging 2 websites, one an Australian branch and one a UK one. We've decided to have a UK page and a AUS page so agency.site/uk/ agency.site/aus/ but what is the best tactic for the service pages? ideally, we'd like a web-design service page to rank in Australia and the UK but not sure if this is actually possible, or whether to duplicate the pages and localise them i.e. /web-design-leeds/ and /web-design-melbourne/ What's everyone's thoughts on this? localised landing pages with some duplicate content or one master page with both locations mentioned? Thanks!
Local SEO | | Unbranded_Lee1 -
From traction to non existent! What happened to my Photography site and what can I do to fix it?
Aloha guys, To start as I always do with the (awesome) Moz community I wanted to say thanks for the insight! This has to be one of the best online communities and help resource with great positive and concise help that really makes a difference, so many thanks everyone! PS I also do my best to relay what I learn here to fellow business owners and point them to SEO boosting avenues to help support the community as much as possible. Anyways... **My Photo website ** **Current top wedding website (I do enjoy her work!!!) ** Attached below is a link to some stats/graphs! The Problem! After the recent Google update last month I've had a drop in my site visibility from 5.8% and some change to now .7% of search volume.. Painful for my photo & video business here on Kauai to say the least. A few images are attached, is there also any correlations you guys can see or think may help to get my site up to the first page? I know we deliver some of the very best work here on the island and deliver great service too, its a bummer that we cant do more for folks visiting here that dont even know we exist! The question! Do you guys have any ideas on what can be done to get my page to gaining organic traction and doing great again? My goal is to have our business rank for Kauai Wedding Videographer, Kauai Wedding Photographer, and Kauai Family Photographer! My moz dashboard is still saying we're on the way for that but that my search visibility is way way down. Any clarity or ideas are greatly appreciated you guys! I would love to relay this to the wedding community as well! Warmest aloha from Kauai everybody and have a great day! NjELT NjELT
Local SEO | | Trey30 -
To Keep My Company's CO.UK Page Or Redirect It...
Hi Moz'ers - I have a question... Just to set the stage, we're a small recruiting firm, with an even smaller marketing department. I'm essentially a one man wrecking crew and don't have a ton of extra time. That being said, I know that page rank (and local office rank) are critical to our inbound lead generation, so I'm willing to invest some of my time into doing it right. The issue I'm having is ranking high as a local business in Austin, New York, San Francisco, and London, UK (to name a few). So far I've solved this through building dedicated subpages on our .com site and link building key word anchor text towards those pages. The only page that's not really gaining traction is our London page. So I decided to clone (most of) the site, tweak the text (to try and avoid dup text), and try and get that page to rank. I'm also having it hosted on a local server, have it using a local domain address suffix (co.uk), using local hreflang (on our .com site), created dedicated web 2.0 sites, and done my best to do some link building. The problem I'm facing is crapy local ranking, and limited bandwidth to maintain two sites. Should I: A) Scrap the co.uk site and focus on the .com (and subpages)
Local SEO | | bettsrecruiting
B) Keep the co.uk domain, and just redirect the URL to our .com page
C) Keep the co.uk domain, send all links from the home page to the relevant page on our .com page, and set up 301 redirects for all other relevant pages.
D) Hire someone to clean up, rewrite, and upkeep the co.uk site because it has the most SEO value in the long run and is the only way I'm going to be able to rank locally in London. What are your thoughts? Thanks in advance! Tim Our European Site - http://bettsrecruiting.co.uk/
Our US Site - http://bettsrecruiting.com/0 -
Community Discussion: Miriam's 2017 Local SEO Predictions ... And Yours?
I want to start this thread by thanking everyone in our community who has started and contributed to great threads this past year. You guys are an inspiration! I want to offer up a few predictions for the Local SEO industry in 2017 and ask you to contribute your own: Attribution will be big in 2017. Google will roll out a more thorough set of attributes in the GMB dashboard as we move forward through the new year. We'll see further rollout out of paid packs in service industries in which Google can play the middle man role. Free-packs won't be gone by the end of the year, but there will be fewer of them. Even SMB local businesses will have to start to tackle the ramifications of voice search. Local SEO will continue to merge with traditional, offline marketing. Local business websites will still matter, but Google will continue to do all it can to keep users within layers of its own local product, and some people will find this maze a bit bewildering. Reviews will finally be recognized as an integral facet of citations, rather than as something separate from them. Now, please, look into your own crystal ball and share your predictions with the community. What are your predictions for Local SEO in 2017? I'd love to know. And, while I'm at it, please let me wish each of you a busy and profitable new year in our exciting industry!
Local SEO | | MiriamEllis4 -
How to promote a local SEO/Web design company via a blog (mainly blogging) and social media?
Hello, What is possible as far as promoting a local SEO and Web Design Company with a blog? I'm offering simple web design, both informational and product based, as well as SEO for existing informational and product-based companies here in Boise, Idaho. At first it won't be face to face so there's no local SEO. I honestly don't like to sell. I've done it for years and I'd like to spend my time blogging (mainly blogging), doing social media, and volunteering. How can I use this approach to get a beginning agency off the ground? Please don't tell me to go push my services. I'd like to get my company off the ground through avenues that have integrity to me. How do I do this? Feel free to include articles and videos in your response if appropriate. Thank you.
Local SEO | | BobGW0 -
Changing Your Company's Name
Our firm is considering adding another person and adding that person's name to the firm. In terms of our online presence, what all would have to be done for that to work? For example: 1. We aren't changing the domain, but should we get a domain with the new name and redirect it to our current site? 2. Do I need ask the people who have linked to our site with our name in the anchor text to change it to the new name? 3. Do I need to get back to all our old posts/blogs/etc and edit them with the new name? 4. Can we use our current social media names or do we need to setup new accounts? 5. If we decide to just keep the onsite marketing the same, but change the name in regards to offsite markeitng (banners, billboards, etc) will that conflict have a very negative effect? 6. Anything else, anyone wants to point out would be great. Thanks, Ruben
Local SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
How does local citations and links differ from national links?
HI So I read on here somewhere that it is important to get local links, instead of just national links. I am curious how does Google know if the links you are getting are from a local source? Thank you
Local SEO | | Berner0 -
Is there a tool out there that can help me determine how people in a particular area search for things?
I'm attempting to create geo-specific landing pages for a client. For example if I'm targeting southern Milwaukee very specifically I'd have to target Oak Creek, South Milwaukee, Bay View, etc. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to create landing pages for every one of those. Is there a tool to help with this issue? The tool I use right now is this http://www.5minutesite.com/local_keywords.php I like it for getting the names of every city/village/town in the area. However, it doesn't answer the nagging question ... how do people search for services in those areas?
Local SEO | | tunatraffic1