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.
Website credits for designers - good or bad
-
Hi My core service is web design and development. I often place a credit on my clients websites pointing them back to my web design or web development pages. Is this a wise practice with penguin and panda updates? Would this also pull my ranking down?
-
Wow, yea... 85,000 incoming footer links would be a problem
Do let us know in a followup if you see a difference.
Good luck!
P.
P.S. And thanks for the 'good answer' vote
<object id="plugin0" style="position: absolute; z-index: 1000;" width="0" height="0" type="application/x-dgnria"><param name="tabId" value="undefined"> <param name="counter" value="144"></object>
-
That is actually an excellent approach, I have looked at two clients sites on as 50,000 links back to my hosting page and another has 35,000 back to my design page. The link is within the footer of everypage. (one site has news items updating every 30mins so that's why the numbers are so high) I can easily change the footers to no follow and then ask if I can put a little sentence into the about page on there site saying thanks to me creating the site. I can implement this change on the big site instantly as they allow me to do what I want to the site:o) Excited to see if this makes a difference now
thanks
-
I'm going to suggest a hybrid of a number of the approaches mentioned, Cocoon. And the reason is because you essentially have two different purposes in mind.
The footer links should be thought of as click-generating links for real eyeballs. You want to make it easy if someone like the site you designed to be able to find you as the developer. So it's primary purpose is click-throughs. Design it as the call to action you think will best generate clickthroughs.Making the anchor text a little different on each site can't hurt either.
Being sitewide, and on several different sites, these footer links are prime candidates for Penguin devaluation, so no-follow these. Which isn't a problem because you're designing them for clickthrough, not rank-passing anyway.
Then, see if you can get an editorial link from the website as well. "About" pages can be ideal for this as they usually rank fairly well so can pass some juice. And it makes sense that an About page might talk about the folks who built the site. An added advantage is that About pages don't generally have a huge number of additional links, so there's more juice to pass.
And DEFINITELY try to get reviews from your satisfied clients on Google and Yelp at least. Web designers don't typically show up in local search features, but getting the reviews to help your Google+ Local page to rank as well is still very valuable.
Interested to know what you think of this approach.
Paul
<object id="plugin0" style="position: absolute; z-index: 1000;" width="0" height="0" type="application/x-dgnria"><param name="tabId" value="undefined"> <param name="counter" value="166"></object>
-
We are about to change how we do link back to our site with the method you describe e.g. home page only link which goes to a the project page for that client on our website.
What's the most appropriate format for such a footer link? Should the footer link be brand name text or keyword text or image link with an appropriate alt tag?
-
The main intent with the footer link is to try acquire additional clients, so just having it in a blog post can potentially cost you business. However, you do have to worry about over-optimizing yourself due to all the links with exact match anchor text. There was actually a different blog post about this recently:
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2239260/Using-Footer-Links-to-Diversify-Your-Backlink-Profile
In the article it suggested creating a page on your website specifically about this project. This ensures that you link to a relevant page, in Google's eyes, as well as a relevant page for anyone that is interested in your services. The blog also suggests no-following all of the links minus the one on the home page. That way you still get a decent amount of link juice, but don't have to worry about a site-wide link.
-
That's a sound solution , I ve been adding to the footer. Possible get them to write review on google places reviews. Think need to change my approach. Cheers Takeshi
-
I think it's still a fine way of getting links, as long as you're not overdoing it. Instead of spamming anchor text links in the footers like a lot of companies do, you could try just having a link on the homepage, or have them write a blog post about your company with an in-context link.
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
-
Are on-site content carousel bad for SEO?
Hi, I didn't find an answer to my question in the Forum. I attached an example of content carousel, this is what I'm talking about. I understand that Google has no problem anymore with tabbed contents and accordeons (collapsible contents). But now I'm wondering about textual carousels. I'm not talking about an image slider, I'm talking about texts. Is text carousel harder to read for Google than plain text or tabs? Of course, i'm not talking about a carousel using Flash. Let's say the code is proper... Thanks for your help. spfra5
Technical SEO | | Alviau0 -
US and UK Websites of Same Business with Same Content
Hello Community, I need your help to understand, whether I can use the US website's content on my UK website or not? US Website's domain: https://www.fortresssecuritystore.com UK Website's domain: https://www.fortresssecuritystore.co.uk Both websites are having same content on all the pages, including testimonials/reviews. I am trying to gain business from Adwords and Organic SEO marketing. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | CommercePundit1 -
Subpage with own homepage and navigation good or bad?
Hi everybody, I have the following question. At the company I work, we deliver several services. We help people buy the right second hand car (technical inspections). But we also have an import-service. Because those services are so different, I want to split them on our website. So our main website is all about the technical inspections. Then, when you click on import, you go to www.example.com/import. A subpage with it's own homepage en navigation, all about the import service. It's like you have an extra website on the same domain. Does anyone has experience with this in terms of SEO? Thank you for your time! Kind regards, Robert
Technical SEO | | RobertvanHeerde0 -
Migrating micro site into existing website
My company is planning to migrate an existing (ecommerce) micro site - which sits on its own domain - into their main ecommerce site. This means that the content will be moved from www.microdomain.co.uk to www.maindomain.com/category. Some products already exist on the main domain. The micro site is fairly small with just over 400 pages - I am planning to map each URL to the new URL (exact corresponding page) and create 301 redirects for each. Where any additional content does not exist yet on the existing main domain, we will create it and 301 redirect to it. The micro site currently ranks fairly well for some keywords - being such a specialised micro site, (some of) the keywords also form part of the domain name, however, they won't on the main page although they may form part of the URL (category). As an example (using a made up URL), our micro site www.bread-sticks.co.uk ranks on page 1 for the keyword bread sticks - we don't just sell bread sticks on www.bread-sticks.co.uk but also rolls and bread though, bread sticks is one category of very closely related categories. Say our main domain is www.supermarket.co.uk (selling a wide range of food / drink products. The micro site will be moving to www.supermarket.co.uk/baked-products/ - which is a category. Within that category, there are sub categories, i.e. bread sticks, rolls and bread which will sit under www.supermarket.co.uk/bread-sticks/ etc. What would be the best way for ensuring that our main domain would take over the rankings from our micro site, given that it will be sitting on our main domain as a category (one of many)? Can we expect www.supermarket.co.uk/baked-products/ or www.supermarket.co.uk/bread-sticks/ to replace www.bread-sticks.co.uk in the rankings simply by 301 redirecting? Thanks for your help!
Technical SEO | | ViviCa10 -
How To Cleanup the Google Index After a Website Has Been HACKED
We have a client whose website was hacked, and some troll created thousands of viagra pages, which were all indexed by Google. See the screenshot for an example. The site has been cleaned up completely, but I wanted to know if anyone can weigh in on how we can cleanup the Google index. Are there extra steps we should take? So far we have gone into webmaster tools and submitted a new site map. ^802D799E5372F02797BE19290D8987F3E248DCA6656F8D9BF6^pimgpsh_fullsize_distr.png
Technical SEO | | yoursearchteam0 -
What is the best URL designed for a product page?
Should a product page URL include the category name and subcategory name in it? Most ecommerce platforms it seems are designed to do have the category and sub-category names included in the URL followed by the product name. If that is the case and the same product is listed in more then 1 category and sub-category then will that product have 2 unique urls and as a result be treated as 2 different product pages by google? And then since it is the same product in two places on the site won't google treat those 2 pages as having duplicate content? SO is it best to not have the category and sub-category names in the URL of a product page? And lastly, is there a preferred character limit for a URL to be less than in size? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | gallreddy0 -
How to search HTML source for an entire website
Is there a way for me to do a "view source" for an entire website without having to right-click every page and select "view source" for each of them?
Technical SEO | | SmartWebPros0 -
If a redirecting URL has more value than the website should I move it?
Client has two website addresses: Website A is a redirect to Website B. It has one indexed page. But this is the URL being used in collateral. It has the majority of back links, and citations everywhere list Website A as the URL. Website B is where the actual website lives. Google recognizes and indexes the 80+ pages. This website has very few backlinks going to it. This setup does not seem good for SEO. Moreover, the analytics data is completely messed up because Website B shows that the biggest referral source is... you guessed it Website A. I'm thinking going forward, I should: Move all the content from Website B to Website A. Setup Website B to permanently 301 Redirect to Website A. Is that the best course of action?
Technical SEO | | flowsimple0