Over Optimization & Footer Links for Crediting Web Design to a Company

[JoshGill27]

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?

[NakulGoyal]

I would ask you the following questions:

1. Are all the client sites on the same server ?
2. Do you have a clients page where you link back to each of your clients ?
3. How does your link profile look ? Do you have lots of other links ?
4. How many client sites are we talking ? 10/20/50/500/1000 ? And then how would you compare them to the total links you have ?

If your link profile is mostly natural, I wouldn't worry about it that much. But going forward you could nofollow them. Also, what's the anchor text in your links ? Your Company Name or Website Designed ? Do more of Brand Name, combined with Anchor Text. So all sorts of variations. Do not make them consistent.

I hope that helps.

[JoshGill27]

1. Yes

2. No, they only link to our main web design/seo site. Not us to them except in some cases where we have a case study for example.

3.Not as many as we would like But to honestly answer your question I would say say our clients make up 1/2 of our link profile and many of them are in the global footer so are sitewide.

4. Probably 20 sites right now

We are only using branded company name in anchor text. Thanks for the feedback.

[NakulGoyal]

In that case, I would not sweat over it. If you think about it, companies can't control who links to them. Imagine all those Wordpress, Blogspot Blogs, which have a sitewide blogroll. If a mommy blogger created a blog 5 years ago and linked to Disney.com for example, and now she does not even remember that she created a blog...what can Disney.com do about it and they are all from username.wordpress.com kind of URLs, so all from the same IP.

Anyways, long story short, all kinds of links...add up to become a natural link profile. For Web Design companies, this is fairly common in my opinion and good news is that you are using brand as a keyword, so I don't think there's something to be worried about. Going forward, if I were you, I would nofollow the links. But leave the old ones as is unless there's an issue in which case you could add nofollow to those existing links as well.

[DanLaBate]

I have always been curious as to how the SE's treat this.  Yes, it is probably not a good idea if you are hosted on the same server as the rest of your client's websites, but looking at the current proposed changes as to what may possibly be a penalty, I think that it wouldn't matter much where they are hosted.

I am really interested if anyone has any suggestions or thoughts on a way to give a creative credit to the organization that created the design or creative work i.e) "website design by company " using a micro format or HTML tag.

If the word coming down the pipe is a concentration on natural optimization, then calling a brown dog, a brown dog so to speak by using the proper citation would never be spammy. So linking to your website with "website design by company" shouldn't be penalized, nor should it require a no-follow if it is citing the creative origin, right? Am I making sense, it would be no different than an Author citation.

Reading on this topic today made me think about this, so what would be the most appropriate, a micro-format or some other tag? IDK, but if I come to a conclusion, you will be the first to know.

[JoshGill27]

Dan, thanks for getting involved in the discussion. It is funny that most design firms carry out this practice and I have never heard it discussed before. I will have to look into using a micro format for this as I had not thought about that before. I guess we will soon find out what role that plays in appears as part of a "link scheme" or not with the new update rolling out soon. Thanks again.

[JoshGill27]

Just found an interesting post in webmaster world that kinda answers how Google may feel about these typs of links.

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4445558.htm

This is going to mess up a lot of Web Design firms if they start to enforce this.

[LewisJenkins69]

I just asked a similar question here :

Following Penguin, what is the best practice for a web design agency placing a footer link in client sites?

(I didn't see this existing topic)

The advice I received was :

1. Use only your brand name in anchor text when linking from client websites

2. A single link from a clients home page is probably better than linking from every page.

[David_ODonnell]

These links are not editorial earned but I have mixed feelings about them, here's why:

I don't have a problem when a designer ads one text or image link with their brand name in the footer, as long as the client is happy with it. If you've designed an awesome site that link may act as lead gen.

However, I have noticed designers getting a bit crazy with this and adding multiple (2,3,4 more) keyword rich text links (web design, web development, web deigners location etc etc) in footers which I really do have a problem with as they are only there for one reason. It looks spammy on the client's site and may actually get their site penalised.