Is there any BAD SEO implications to acquiring backlinks from customers?

[Deacyde]

What would be the negative aspects to sending customer's requests for a backlink in conjunction with asking how their experience with us was?

Backlinks are one of the toughest for our niche industry to acquire and this seems like one of the best angles to cover, since we have .edu , .mil , .gov , and many bigname companies making purchases from us.

Would if be wrong to offer a small 5% discount during their next purchase if they create a backlink with us? Or if we added a " Customer's we've served " section including their logo or text link?

Thank you!

I hope you're all having an awesome day / week / month!

[TahirLiaqat]

you are fine, as long as there is a genuine reason for the link. If you think that link is useful for the user of that site then do it otherwise do not.

[Deacyde]

Thank you, especially for the FTC link, I didn't even think they dealt with things of this matter, but there it is.

As for the footer links, I'm staying far, far away from that, I'd only create another page for the customer links to go on, and scheme it as a customer's we've served / dealt with section, listing the link / logo as well as the good or bad words they had, maybe even the products they bought, and how those products held up.

It's been a goal of mine for this company to create as much helpful content as I can think of, then to push brain through a playdoh extruder and get even more.

Thanks again! Love the minds here on this site.

[Eric_Rohrback]

I would recommend reviewing Google's guidelines on Link Schemes very closely. If you offer a discount if someone links to you, I'd consider that on the same level as a paid link or paid endorsement. The other thing you need to really watch if you're having customers review your business is the FTC guideline regulating the disclosure of paid endorsements if you're planning on offering some sort of payment or discount.

If a customer links to you because you did a great job, then it's cool. If you tell them what URL to link to and what anchor text to use, then it's going to be seen as manipulation. Getting customers to review your business or link to you is a good idea; you just need to make sure you're doing it the right way. You don't need a discount if the customers really loved what you did.

I'm also in the camp of not putting footer links from a client site to mine. If you put it there because you work on a client's site and it's passing juice to your site, then it kind of seems like it's only there to benefit your ranking. I've seen this debate go back and forth, so I'd really like to see other opinions (preferably contradictory to mine) to see why designer/developer links in the footer would be good. I think they would be fine if you no-followed the link, so it wouldn't pass any benefit. If you only wanted it for traffic, then cool, but really how qualified would that traffic be? Curious to see other thoughts.

[Lumina]

There aren't really any negative SEO implications to having a client's site backlink to yours. The only way there would be is if their site is spammy or something to that effect. This is true both for having a link to their site in yours, and vice versa (which I only bring up because of your last question).

There's also nothing wrong with offering a discount on the next purchase that customer makes. However, I've found that most customers are OK with doing this without having to do that. I've actually set it up so that, in our contracts, we have a clause that says we're allowed to, at our own discretion, add our logo and a link back to our site in the footer of theirs (with certain reasonable restrictions, etc).

Either method works. Asking how they feel about your service is an equally valid method of achieving this. You're good to go!