I have been reading several posts on these forums about this subject. How about this...

Following on from Marcus's comments about a credit page, If the link went back to the specfic portfolio page for that client on the designer's site is that better than linking back to the root domain? If this is a good way to go what anchor text would you recommend [brand name] or [brand name | keyword] or [keyword]

Would that link still need to be a nofollow. As far as I understand it a nofollow is for a site you can't vouch for or trust implicitly, however as the website designer a link back from a client site could be a trusted link could it not? Assuming we have the client agreement of course

We have generated new business from links that we have on client sites linking back to us. The new client will call/email us saying "we see you did example.com website, which we like, would you mind quoting for a redesign our website".  Without that link we may never have got that new piece of business.

We always ask the client if we can place on link on their website and they all say ok. We don't do this for purely for SEO. The only thing we have done previously is to include the link in the footer of every page on the client site, which we are now in the process of changing to being only the client home page.

With that in mind, is the following ok to do?

1. Place text/image link in footer of client home page

2. Link to be "nofollow" which goes to specific page on our own website e.g. oursite.com/portfolio/clientname.php

3. on oursite.com/portfolio/clientname.php page we link back to client's home page, again this would be a "nofollow"

Ok, so what you are saying is that as a website design company we shouldn't put links on client sites back to our own, whether agreed or otherwise?