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
-
What’s the best tool to visualize internal link structure and relationships between pages on a single site?
I‘d like to review the internal linking structure on my site. Is there a tool that can visualize the relationships between all of the pages within my site?
Web Design | | QBSEO0 -
Do more links from sub-domains to domain (website) hurt rankings?
Hi all, If there are multiple sub-domains like abc.website.com, 123.website.com, etc...and if the top pages of website are linked from multiple sub-domains via top menu or footer links; will this hurts? Will too much interlinking of few top pages of a website from it's sub-domains dilute link juice? How many links ideally we can add to website from a sub-domain? Thanks
Web Design | | vtmoz0 -
Is this a good WP template for this site?
I need some advice, please. My cousin wants to take his site; http://www.gaport.com/ and move it to this wordpress theme http://themeforest.net/item/elvyre-retina-ready-html5-template/6639095. I have two reservations about this, but before I say anything I'd like the community's feedback, please. 1. It's a brand new theme. It's not even out for two weeks. That strikes me as a giant red flag. ** Just to clarify, i's not a new theme; it's new for WP. 2. It only costs $15. I can't tell what's wrong with this theme, but "you get what you paid for" is a cliche for a reason, and that price seems way too low for something quality. Are these legitimate concerns? Do you all have any recommendations for a theme that might suit him better? I'd appreciate any and all feedback. Thanks, Ruben
Web Design | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Are Carousels Bad for SEO?
My real estate web site was migrated form Drupal to Wordpress last July. The ranking have dropped a lot since migration. One of the things we changed is that we have added two carousels to the home page. Most of the text is below the carousels. Is this bad for SEO? Thanks,
Web Design | | Kingalan1
Alan1 -
Can anyone recommend me a good wordpress website designer for local services website?
Hi all,
Web Design | | chanel27
Does anyone know of any good wordpress SEO designer? I am looking to build some sites on:
Aircon Services
Laundry Services
Carpet Cleaning etc The wordpress must be able to easily add articles from time to time like this HTML site:
http://www.airconservices.com.sg/articles.html Appreciate you help!0 -
Changing Links that Show Up when I Google Brand (Site) Name
Hi SEOmoz Community, A quick question for you all. I've added an attachment for reference. When I google my brand name, say for example, Applied StemCell, I see six links as well below the description. Oddly though, these links seem to be chosen at random, or at least I'm not sure how Google decides on them. When I click on one of the links that is the company's name, Applied StemCell it brings me to a PDF document! Is there any way I can choose which ones to display there? Thanks! OF2oVVN.png
Web Design | | swzhai0 -
How to link to a site without passing ANY linkjuice (other than simply nofollowing)
I have heard that there are other ways of linking to a site, to completely avoid passing any seo value I think it was even in a whiteboard friday video where I saw Rand say something about doing a 307 "temporary" redirect, or something like that? Basically, I want to let my customers compare our prices with ebay, but I don't want to have ebay outrank us (for obvious reasons) Any help?
Web Design | | TylerAbernethy0 -
Over Optimization & Footer Links for Crediting Web Design to a Company
With the recent updates to the algorithm having to do with link networks and over optimization it has got me to thinking about the footer links we add to each site that we build and do web design for linking back to ours. I could certainly see how Google could make the assumption that these are all on the same server, pointing back to one main site, and penalize us for that. Should we no=follow these links? They may say something like, "Website Designed By: Company Name". They do provide a valuable source to some extent of traffic to the site from people interested in our designs. Any thoughts?
Web Design | | JoshGill270