Is Sitewide Credit Link Good or Bad in 2015?
-
We are a web design agency thus we get a good number of links (footer) from our client's site. According to Matt Cutt, Google considers all the sitewide links to 1. So is it okay to have those links?
Note: Those links are do-follow and most with 2 anchor text. "Web Design" by "Company Name" and "Website Development" by."Company Name".
Thanks
-
Thanks for your info. May I get any reference?
-
unless its terms of service or privacy policy something to that affect. You will eat your crawl budget and Google has banned or frowned upon designers and developers getting links by putting it on client sites. Even though it is relevant it is still a no-no.
Hope this helps,
-
These links could be helpful or harmful. Google says that they don't like site-wide links, that they don't like keyword links. You can listen to Google or take your chances.
-
Yeah, my clients are okay with that. Cause we only put a link on the footer ones our client approve that. But the thing is, we develop the whole site. Not using wordpress or joomla. So either way, there will be 1 name and link.
-
Thanks for your Great information. Is it okay to put our brand name there with link without the keyword?
or simply just remove all the links from all the sites. Isn't that a bad idea? Cause 1. we'll lose a huge number of links. And 2. Deleting links which are not suspicious to google, might harm the site.
-
A lot of designers believe that these links drive business. The question is how much business do they drive away because website owners don't want keyword anchor text links in their footer. The design agency wants two anchor text links, the SEO wants his anchor text links, a logo person thinks he needs a link.
I believe that a lot of website owners, who have seen their friends, or maybe one of their own websites get whacked for penguin, unnatural link, etc. penalties and be sunk in the SERPs for over a year, are now either afraid enough or smart enough to realize that a bunch of site-wide, keyword, money term, do-follow, anchor text links in their footer isn't "best practice" for the owner of a website.
Can you name any SEOs who post intelligent content here at Moz who have two money-term, keyworded, site-wide, do-followed, anchor-text links in their footer pointing to a design agency?
Added: Just placing "Web Design by Egol" in the footer, without a link, may have positive SEO value. It is a mention of your brand with no link and visitors who see it and want to get in contact with you can simply search using those words.
-
Googles guidelines on link schemes covers this:
"Additionally, creating links that weren’t editorially placed or vouched for by the site’s owner on a page, otherwise known as unnatural links, can be considered a violation of our guidelines. Here are a few common examples of unnatural links that may violate our guidelines:
(scroll down the page a little bit)......
- Widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites"
In addition to Don's suggestion to review Cyrus' video, I would strongly recommend reviewing Google's guidelines on the subject. They aren't specifically saying links from a client site to yours, but it's pretty clear if you're putting a do-follow link to your site from a site you built for a client... that's a no-go since it was placed there by you and not editorially placed by your client.
-
HI Jubaer,
Last year, Cyrus Shepard did a White Board Friday and touched on this very subject.
REF: https://moz.com/blog/the-rules-of-link-building-whiteboard-fridayQuote: "...
Don't link externally in the footer
A couple of other rules that I see people violate all the time that Google has made painfully clear in the past few months: Don't link externally in the footer. Just don't. I'm not going to go into the reasons. Just don't do that.
Avoid site-wide links
By the same token, except for navigation, avoid site-wide links. This is something that we've known for years. If someone links to you externally, site-wide, in the side bar, that's ripe for Penguin-style links...."
The idea of linking to your site on every page is an old tactic used to generate higher DA / PA for the linked site. There is of course something to be said about a company that is proud of its work and is happy to put their name on it, but in general the idea of harvesting clients link juice in an effort to boost yours is a bit pretentious.
At best you get credit for 1 link on the site, at worst you move the bar towards getting a penalty for spamming.
My advice, if your clients are okay with it, pick a page like "about us" or "contacts" and put a small blurb, site powered By "WordPress" designed by YourDesignSite.com. This would be 2 external links and draw a correlation for scrapers between the CMS, the Keyword Design(ed) and Your site.
Hope this makes sense and helps,
Don
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
-
Too Many Links on One Page - What to Do?!
Hello Geniuses, Prodigies, and Experts of the Field, My website pages for www.1099pro.com have too many links on one page, something like 150-175, and I understand that each page should ideally be under 100. Most of these links, approx 105, come from dropdown navigation options in the header toolbar or the footer links. It is my take that these links make our site easier to navigate but I'm sure that they are hurting my pagerank / SERPs. Is there a best way to handle a situation like this? I'd really prefer not to alter the header/footer layout of the entire site by removing 50-75 navigational links. The only other idea I have is below but I have no idea if it would work. For any link that I do not care to pass pagerank, institute a "nofollow" parameter. This would be my favorite option if it is viable.
Web Design | | Stew2220 -
Does my font look good in this?
Apologies for the title, but a serious point here.... We (like a lot of people) spend time on almost mechanical on-page optimisation. However, we are finally moving our thinking to our visitors and what works for them - not the search engines. I know, about time. With that in mind we have de-cluttered our content pages and increased font sizes - focussing on usability more. This is an example of a tweaked page - http://www.compactlaw.co.uk/free-legal-information/employment-law/exceptions-for-unfair-dismissal.html This is an un-tweaked page - http://www.compactlaw.co.uk/agency-agreement.html Which do you prefer to read/look at??
Web Design | | dexm100 -
WIX? is it any good for SEO
Hi people. I have just built my website www.bellagiolimousines.com.au using WIX. I am in the process of optimising for SEO, and after reading a couple of older posts i.e 2012; I read that some SEO consultants do not like WIX. However with their recent upgrades, I was hoping if anyone else has had any recent experience with WIX? I have spent a considerable amount of time building this site, and I don't want to waste anymore time in optimising it, if I am not going to receive a top 3 organic SERP. Hope to hear from someone real soon!
Web Design | | Giorgio680 -
Internal links, new pages & Domain Authority
I have two questions regarding Domain Authority: 1. Is it possible that a drop in Domain Authority may have been caused by adding a blog and blog posts? In other words, would adding pages/posts dilute the site's authority? And will it catch back up with itself or will that require inbound links to those new pages? (oops! that was 3 questions in one) 2. Would it be detrimental to have internal links coming from blog posts without authority to my Home page and could that have contributed to a drop in Domain Authority? Thanks!
Web Design | | gfiedel0 -
What is a really great bounce rate for a product or service site? What does Good look like?
I am really curious about a result I have never seen before. Our bounce rate went down a lot on a new site. So, what is good??? Recently, we took on a project with a company that offers a product they install for consumers and who had been in business for 15 plus years. The company is successful, has good customer base of those who have been made very happy, etc. It is not a repeat sale type of product, etc. One and done. Their site when we began talking was roughly a year old and was not well constructed but not terrible. Most of the issues were around I frames, use of older coding, poor SEO, etc. There was not really a way to "redesign" and we built a new site. This became a true collaboration in a B2B environment as the owner pushed us like crazy. Not the bad kind of push, the one that makes you say to your team, "Let's find a way!" The result, IMO, was a gorgeous site. But, as you know, those are a dime a dozen. But, to get to the point, when we took over the account they had a bounce rate of around 45%. I did not see this as either good or bad, but a fact and for this industry probably not bad at all. In all honesty, I was not looking at that as a first metric I wanted to move, but it was obviously at or near the top for all the reasons we know. So, this site is a local business, not an everyday product and gets about 2500 to 3000 uniques per month. If we compare to May of 2011/2012: 2011 2012 Total Visitors 1852 3,298 Uniques 1609 2,740 Pageviews 5,634 23,203 Pages/visit 3.04 7.04 Avg Duration 2.05 3.20 Yes, I am leaving off what we are getting, yes, I am leaving off the site. Please don't hate me. I am really wanting to see what others see with site changes and bounce rates first and will disclose. So, what's a great bounce rate? How do you know?
Web Design | | RobertFisher0 -
Do you think it will be a good idea to delete old blog pages off the server
I paid somebody to build my website using Dreamweaver, and at one point I didn't know how to use the template which automatically updates every page in the menu section so I stupidly broke the template on every new page when I made the websites blog and put the pages into a subfolder. I realised this was a silly thing to do and now and I now know how to use the template correctly I've copied every single page over from the subfolder and put it into the main template. Now I can update the template menu and every page changes automatically. The only problem is I've now got two versions of every page of my blog on the website. For some reason when I do a sitemap it comes up with a links to the old blog pages I, don't know why when I've removed the links from the blog page? and also the new copies also. I have basically got a copys of all blog pages. Do you think it will be a good idea to delete old indexed blog pages off the server so that when Google spiders the site it will pick up only the new links to the copy pages?
Web Design | | whitbycottages0 -
Websites with only one "html file" and page href # is good for SEO?
I bought one website from templatemonster that contains only one HTML and the pages are generated by links (PROGRAMACAO) My website: www.nextformaturas.com.br This is good in term of SEO? or it is better an website with deveral pages with diferent contents? What are the pros and cons? I really lost on this.
Web Design | | Naghirniac0 -
Where is the best place to put reciprocal links on our website?
Where should reciprocal links be placed on our website? Should we create a "Resources" page? Should the page be "hidden" from the public? I know there is a right answer out there! Thank you for your help! Jay
Web Design | | theideapeople0