Following Penguin, what is the best practice for a web design agency placing a footer link in client sites?

[LewisJenkins69]

For years we have included a 'Web Design by ...' link in the footer of all client websites designed by us.

However, following the Penguin update, it seems that this legitimate practice could now be penalised.

Should we be removing those links from our client's sites? There are tens of thousands, all with similar or identical text!

For future client sites, should we avoid these footer links altogether? Or maybe limit the link to a single page on each site?

[WilliamBay]

I know this almost a year after it was asked, but since I was doing a little research, I thought I'd provide a solution I came up with.

When I design a site, I want an attribution link on every page. I can't rely on a visitor saying "I love this site, who designed it?" 3 levels deep, not finding an attribution at the bottom, then thinking that they'd find it on the home page. It doesn't even make good usability sense.

So here's what I set out to do with my sites moving forward:

Still doing Sitewide links, but only the link on the Home Page will be followed. All other links will be NoFollowed.

If you use WordPress, you can use the following conditional statement. (Of course you'll want to replace your own Anchor Text and URL (unless you design pretty websites and want to give me the credit ).

if ( is_front_page() ) { echo "[](;</span><span style=) [   echo "http://flauntyoursite.com";   
   echo ">Flaunt Your Site](;</span><span style=)";

} else {   
   echo "[   
   echo "http://flauntyoursite.com";](;</span><span style=)[   
   echo " rel=";   
   echo "nofollow";   
   echo ">Flaunt Your Site](;</span><span style=)";
} ?>

It's important to leave the Space between the " and the rel=" otherwise it will collapse the url into something not readable and give you a 404 when you try to click it.

Hope this helps some of you.

[EvolveCreative]

Since when does SEO = manipulation of the search engines? I take offense to that. This is my career.

Instead of trying to get your link on the client's homepage, you could have your attribution link in the footer lead to a deep deep page on the client's site. On that page link to your company's site. Make the link to your site no-follow and you should be good to go.

[MiroAsh]

What I am taking from this thread and associated ones, is that no-one knows for sure what the best practice to avoid possible penalisation is. In this scenario caution is the best approach I guess? Removing links with 'SEO' as part of the anchor text is a no-brainer, this advertises to the search engines that our Clients use these services and are actively trying to manipulate the search engines.

Beyond this the advice seems to be that using our brand name in the anchor text should be fine, the link should open in a new window and we should avoid placing our links in the footer. Placing the link on the Homepage somewhere is preferable.

Thanks to all

[MalcolmGibb]

It would basically end up as reciprocal links though. Not really benefiting any party. Web design agencies use footer links for their own benefit, as a former web designer I used to do this as well, although I only linked on brand and not as many designers do just now on keywords like 'web design by' or 'website designed by' and not their brand.

Many designers do link back to their clients in the form of portfolios and case studies, but generally not in the footer.

[LewisJenkins69]

I take your point regarding the nofollow tag, and those footer links are certainly useful ways for humans to discover your agency through a client's site.

However, if I am completely honest, those links have always been placed there with SEO in mind. More incoming links to our site with our carefully chosen keywords boosted our rankings. That's what we were taught, and it was always encouraged. If a human happened to find us via one of those links, that was just a bonus.

Of course this goes against Google's 'design for humans, not for search engines' thing, but for years it has been a standard, accepted practice to 'optimise' those incoming links. And now it is suddenly dishonest - it turns out we've been manipulating Google's results, cheating our way to better rankings.

To me, those 'web design by [agency]' footer links don't feel wrong. They are truthful words, linking to a genuine agency who did the web design. For those reasons I still feel that we should be entitled to any SEO benefit, not adding nofollow like we are doing something criminal.

I need to get my head around this, and it may take some time. Are all incoming links for SEO purposes now evil?

[EvolveCreative]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the nofollow tag here. Technically, regardless of the anchor text used, you are still making a self-made link when you put that attribution link on your client's site. Self-made link = manipulation... well sort of. Just make the link nofollow and you should be good to go.

We've gotten lots of business through attribution links. Our clients don't mind that they're there.

[LewisJenkins69]

We do link back to clients through Case Studies and Our Portfolio pages. I think many agencies do this. Although the footer may not be the best place if you have hundreds of clients!

[EGOL]

I've always wondered why web design companies are not placing site wide links to their clients in the footers of their own sites. Would that not be helpful to their clients and also be a good thing to do?  Certainly more visitors to a web design site would be interested in clicking those links to see samples of web design than would visitors to a car repair site be interested in going to web design?  

[LewisJenkins69]

Thank you both.

In summary :

1. Use only your brand name in anchor text when linking from client websites

2. A single link from a clients home page is probably better than linking from every page.

Sounds like good advice

[MalcolmGibb]

you should possibly try going down the route of having a single link on your clients websites, on the homepage. You want Google to pass good link-juice back to your site, by having 1000x links pointing from every page on a domain back to your site looks like spam and will probably not even be of any value. Your current site probably has tens of thousands of links coming in from only a handful of unique domains.

[semshah143]

Yes Lewis,  A single link on the home page of each site, sounds a better solutions to avoid too many links.

Thanks,

[LewisJenkins69]

Thank you for your response. We are happy to use our brand name in links, although our brand name is actually 'New Forest Web Design', which could still be seen as spammy because The New Forest is the area we trade and Web Design is a service, so Google could see our brand as '[area] Web Design'. Our actual company name is 'New Forest Web Design Ltd', so I guess we should use that?

Also, is it better to have a single link on a client's site, rather than on every page? Some dynamic sites could end up with thousands of links pointing to us. I was thinking that a single link on the home page of each site may be better?

[MalcolmGibb]

Change them to your brand. Avoid using exact match type competitive keywords like 'web design by..' Google does not penalise exatc brand mentions so much as most commercial websites are expected to receive numerous exact match brand links anyway.

[semshah143]

Hello Lewis,

I hope i understand you question. and here is what you can do in future.

you can give a link to your site from your company name or domain. Its a fair thing. Avoid getting links from keywords like web designing company, web designing company in city kind of words. you can write that site is designed and developed by company and can give a link to your site from that company name.

If you can remove the link form whole statement and give a link from your brand name I think it will benefit you more. if they are like thousands in numbers start with few good sites and do it gradually as you get time. so it will not harm your link graph and anchor text too.

Thanks