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
-
Website ranking declined after connecting to CDN
Hi! We are trying to rank https://windowmart.ca for various local search terms. Our head office is in Edmonton where we try to rank https://windowmart.ca/edmonton-windows-doors/ for such terms as "windows Edmonton", "replacement windows Edmonton", "windows and doors Edmonton" as well as others. The website was the leader in its niche for around 2 years. Then we've got some server related issues, moved to a new server and connected CDN Nitropack that really improved our google speed test results. Recently we noticed that our rankings started to drop. Do you know if Nitropack can negatively effect local SEO rankings? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | vaskrupp0 -
My WP website got attack by malware & now my website site:www.example.ca shows about 43000 indexed page in google.
Hi All My wordpress website got attack by malware last week. It affected my index page in google badly. my typical site:example.ca shows about 130 indexed pages on google. Now it shows about 43000 indexed pages. I had my server company tech support scan my site and clean the malware yesterday. But it still shows the same number of indexed page on google.
Technical SEO | | ChophelDoes anybody had ever experience such situation and how did you fixed it. Looking for help. Thanks FILE HIT LIST:
{YARA}Spam_PHP_WPVCD_ContentInjection : /home/example/public_html/wp-includes/wp-tmp.php
{YARA}Backdoor_PHP_WPVCD_Deployer : /home/example/public_html/wp-includes/wp-vcd.php
{YARA}Backdoor_PHP_WPVCD_Deployer : /home/example/public_html/wp-content/themes/oceanwp.zip
{YARA}webshell_webshell_cnseay02_1 : /home/example2/public_html/content.php
{YARA}eval_post : /home/example2/public_html/wp-includes/63292236.php
{YARA}webshell_webshell_cnseay02_1 : /home/example3/public_html/content.php
{YARA}eval_post : /home/example4/public_html/wp-admin/28855846.php
{HEX}php.generic.malware.442 : /home/example5/public_html/wp-22.php
{HEX}php.generic.cav7.421 : /home/example5/public_html/SEUN.php
{HEX}php.generic.malware.442 : /home/example5/public_html/Webhook.php0 -
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 -
Any SEO benefits of adding a Glossary to our website?
Hi all, I manage a website for a software company. Many terms can be quite tricky so it would be nice to add a Glossary page. Other than that, I have 2 questions: 1. What would be the SEO benefits? 2. How would you suggest to implement this glossary so we can get as much SEO benefit as possible (for example how would we link, where would we place the glossary in the terms of the sitemap, etc.). Any advice appreciated! Katarina
Technical SEO | | Katarina-Borovska2 -
The W3C Markup Validation Service - Good, Bad or Impartial?
Hi guys, it seems that now days it is almost impossible to achieve 0 (Zero) Errors when testing a site via (The W3C Markup Validation Service - https://validator.w3.org). With analytic codes, pixels and all kind of tracking and social media scripts gunning it seems to be an unachievable task. My questions to you fellow SEO'rs out there are 2: 1. How important and to what degree of effort do you go when you technically review a site and make the decision as to what needs to be fixed and what you shouldn't bother with. 2. How do you argue your corner when explaining to your clients that its impossible to active 100% validation. *As a note i will say that i mostly refer to Wordpress driven sites. would love ot hear your take. Daniel.
Technical SEO | | artdivision0 -
How to SEO a Website Built off Godaddy?
I have a client whose website is built off Godaddy services. I know Godaddy is not the right choice for building a website, but what's done is done. The client has already bought the Godaddy services and there's no way I can tell him to go rebuild his website before we could optimize it for SEO. I'm already facing a lot of challenges while optimizing on-page elements. When I wanted to verify the ownership for Google Analytics and Webmaster Tool via his Godaddy account. the process failed many times. it looks like Godaddy is using some kind of caching not allowing us to modify the codes. For example, I'd applied the site verification codes for Webmasters Tool 48 hours ago, and the metatag for google site verification is not yet updated in the frontend. It's quite frustrating. What would you suggest?
Technical SEO | | suskanchan1 -
What is the best website structure for SEO?
I've been on SEOmoz for about 1 month now and everyone says that depending on the type of business you should build up your website structure for SEO as 1st step. I have a new client click here ( www version doesn't work)... some bugs we are fixing it now. We are almost finished with the design & layout. 2nd question have been running though my head. 1. What would the best url category for the shop be /products/ - current url cat ex: /products/door-handles.html 2. What would you use for the main menu as section for getting the most out of SEO. Personally i am thinking of making 2-3 main categories on the left a section where i can add content to it (3-4 paragraphs... images maybe a video).So the main page focuses on the domain name more and the rest of the sections would focus on specific keywords, this why I avoid cannibalization. Main keyword target is "door handles" Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | mosaicpro0 -
Schema for Price Comparison Services - Good or Bad?
Hey guys, I was just wondering what the whole schema.org markup means for people that run search engines (i.e. for a niche, certain products) or price comparison engines in general. The intend behind schema.org was to help the engines better understand the pages content. Well, I guess such services don't necessarily want Google to understand that they're just another search engine (and thus might get thrown out of the index for polluting it with search result pages). I see two possible scenarios: either not implement them or implement them in a way that makes the site not look like an aggregator, i.e. by only marking up certain products with unique text. Any thoughts? Does the SEOmoz team has any advice on that? Best,
Technical SEO | | derderko
schuon0