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Hi,

What is best practice for main navigation links with regards to use of keywords in them. For example is it best to using the phrase 'Pricing", "Website Pricing" or "Website Design Pricing"

To me 'Pricing' is more appropriate because to the user they know they are on a website designer's site so what else would pricing be for right?!  Furthermore you use less 'real estate' on the nav bar!

There is on page text around the site which has links to "see our website design pricing" etc so I assume that is perhaps a more natural place to include that phrase?

Look forward to your insights

There would be one link from the client home page to a page on our site and on that same page there is a link back so is that minimal?

For a design agency where we run a few dedicated servers to host our site and client sites how do you cross this problem, just not do any linking to and from client sites?

Our own site and client sites (that we design) are either hosted on the same IP or within same C Class range of IPs

Will there be an issue with Google if we include a link on the client site home page footer (as agreed with client) that links to a specific project page on our website for that client e.g they are not linking to our home page?

For one client site, I see in GA Organic Search Traffic results a lot of Bounce rate 100% and Avg Visit Duration as 0:00:00 what would this mean? GA is correctly installed (as far as I know)

Irving, thanks for clarifying.

On our site we have portfolio pages for each client and that is what we will link to from the client's home page, so each link back will be a unique url and not a link back to our home page.

Regarding long tail link what kind of wording would you recommend / suggest, something like 'Website for Client Company designed by My Company'?

Thomas, I haven't had any negative feedback, this is more to do with getting things done appropriately and one thing we are acutely aware of is that the footer links back to us are on every client page which we are busy reviewing/correcting. This question is kind of the next step, to make sure what we are doing does/will not penalise the client site but still helps us a little

Like I said in my initial question we do get referrals from client sites because of the link we have in the footer.

Thanks Irving. Is it ok to dofollow from client site homepage to our site even if client's site content is not relevant to our own e.g. different business sectors?

I have reposted this as a new question as I posted in an old 'Answered' question but not had a reply.

Footer links

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"

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"

I have been reading this with interest.

So, in a situation where we host our client sites  (that we design) on the same IP as our own site is it ok to include a link on the client site home page footer (as agreed with client) that links to a specific project page on our website for that client e.g they are not linking to our home page?

"So stuffing is good as long as you know where to stop :)" - Yes, I think a sudden downward spiral in rankings will reveal the invisible line

Just going back to your original question - Are you updating your website as often as your competitor? I ask, as we have found with one client who operates in a very competitive market (car leasing) that we have pretty much optimised the site as best we can (within their budget), yet have discovered that when they get lazy (or too busy) in updating their website content, their rankings drop and the moment they get back on the case with content updating their rankings improve, sometimes dramatically.

Thanks Shane, it does help. You made a great point about risk etc when discussing with the client about the techniques that go against guidelines.

I also think you have a valid point about treating the Google guidelines as strict and then flirt with it within reason, sounds like a sensible policy.

This this is a very good question and I'm eager to see what peoples comments are as I see these sorts of anomalies when doing site ranking comparison work for my clients as well.

Whilst I can't give a full answer on each stat, perhaps the quality of your inbound links are not as good as your competitors? ... quality v quantity

What I also find confusing is some higher ranking competitor sites are over optimised e.g keyword stuffing etc (if you go by all the webmaster tools guidelines and white hat stuff that is) yet don't appear to be penalised either which makes it hard to justify to the client why we are not 'copying', for want of a better phrase, the method used by higher ranking competitors.

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?

We plan to do away with fixed footer content and make, for the most part, the content in the traditional footer area unique just like the 'main' part of the content.

This begs the question, do Google know what is footer content as opposed to main on page content?

Hi,

What tools do you use/recommend to analyse what/where links are being clicked on a page.

I have seen a few mentions about CrazyEgg but are there any free (but good) tools around worth using?

Yeah, I also think there is an element in the thought process of "well every other site puts links, newsletters etc in the footer" so why shouldn't we, however reading some other threads on footer links elsewhere it would seem the concensus is "are people actually clicking on the links" in the footer anyway and if not, why have them.

Thanks again Mark, good point about Twitter load times something I had overlooked. I think we just need to more creative about footer elements perhaps, maybe we are over thinking that area of the website!

Thanks for your response Mark, I should have mentioned that the is still in development so not a lot to see. We are having a review of the design and the footer came into question with regards to SEO concerns.

We are thinking now about replacing the footer nav links with a newsletter signup box in that area plus a link to the site's sitemap.

My main point for discussion is really around the repeated elements of the footer such as the tweets and blog snippets.

From your comments are you saying this repeated content should be ok?

We currently have footer content contained in a single php include file and is included in every page and contains the following:

• Most recent 3 tweets from our twitter feed

• Snippets of our 3 most recent blogs posts

• navigation links to our main pages (essentially the same as our main navigation in the header)

Is this good/bad?

We currently have footer content contained in a single php include file and is included in every page and contains the following:

• Most recent 3 tweets from our twitter feed

• Snippets of our 3 most recent blogs posts

• navigation links to our main pages (essentially the same as our main navigation in the header)

Is this bad practice for footer content?

Great answers guys, I think my mind is now straight and how to move forward, not just with our own strategy but our client strategies as well

Is it ok to have a folder and file name to be both the same

e.g

domain.com/xyz-products/

domain.com/xyz-products.php

File name would be a page that lists a number of products and then within the folder there would be x-product.php, y-product.php etc

Thanks Owen,

I certainly like the idea of using the brand domain and from marketing standpoint makes more sense. Also, should our services evolve the keywords that exist in our keyword rich domain at present may become less relevant and hinder progress

I guess from a SEO point of view we can use brand.com/keyword-rich-page-name.html which will work just as well in a lot of cases.

With so many keyword rich domains in circulation is there actually little option for small business right now other than to use keyword rich domains themselves e.g. (businessname)(keywords).com instead of brand e.g. (businessname.com) where competitors are using keyword rich domains and ranking high?

It could be a mis-perception on my part, but, unless you have a very old non keyword domain name, if you don't have a keyword rich domain name in a competitive market you will struggle to succeed unless you have a serious SEO budget.

Unless you are the next Google/Facebook/Pepsi isn't branding just a load of BS ?

We are ourselves are in a predicament about which domain to use for our own website design business. We have a brand name domain name which is a 4 char domain but we also have a brand+keyword domain and are not 100% which one to use as our primary domain.

Perhaps we can use the brand domain as our primary domain and then use the brand+keyword domain as an appropriately constructed single page promotional site, perhaps with unique content which links back to the brand domain? Good idea / Bad idea?

I guess the overriding question is, if the content is good enough is the domain name you choose irrelevent to some extent?

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?

Is requesting people to like your facebook page of any real value for a small business? Is it better to encourage people to write a comment/testimonial about your product or service on their own status with a link to your website and/or Facebook page?

I have a lot of clients getting more and more into the concept of social marketing so I am now wondering how best to guide them in the right direction with regards to Facebook specifically

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