Are moderated external links in a "showcase" worth having?

[schof]

We have some e-commerce software with several dozen websites that use our technology.  The websites have links to the developer and design shops that made the site as well as the site itself.  All of these sites are moderated so we don't have to worry about spam.

My question is should some or all of these links be rel=nofollow?  The links are definitely pointing to legit development shops but those sites aren't always strictly related to e-commerce or the keywords we're trying to rank for.

Any thoughts on how to treat these links?

[RyanKent]

If the links are to legitimate sites and the links offer value to your users, I would leave them as followed links. If you have a concern about the target site then you can change them to nofollow.

[AgentsofValue]

Sounds like you have a pretty good control on who those pages are linking to.  Typically larger e-commerce stores won't add footer links to their service providers in the footers, and I know a lot of web design agencies that add the link into the template without even asking the client if it's OK or not.

Since an outbound link in the homepage would sap some of the link juice of the site, I would suggest putting it under the control of the e-commerce store owner, whether or not to include those footer links, and whether or to make them rel=nofollow.

[EGOL]

If these were my sites I would remove those links completely.

[matbennett]

Google isn't stupid. Credit links are common and legitimate enough that it knows about them and how to handle them.  However we've noticed 2 things regarding credit links since penguin:

1. Watch the anchors

There is a world of difference in intention between a link that looks like this: Site by XYZ Developers and one that looks like this: Website Design New York. Credit links commonly appear site wide in the footer and if those links were pointing to me I'd want to make sure that they look as unlike spam as possible.

2. Don't expect them to count as much

Hard to isolate this amongst all the other changes, but we've seen drops on sites that might suggest this type of link now counts for less.  Really hard to say that for certain based on our data, as there are other factors in play. However it makes sense.

Whether you keep them or not is up to you as it's really one of those borderline things. Hopefully the above will help you make an informed choice.

[schof]

Are you saying its fine for my site but the individual sites might not want them as inbound links?

[EGOL]

If I had an ecommerce site, I would not want links to developers and design shops on my pages - especially if they are keyword anchor links.  It sounds like their are multiple links here and I think that is also excessive.

In my opinion, the developers and design shops should be linking TO their clients rather than trying to siphon from them.

[schof]

Just to clarify, our site provides e-commerce software, we're not an e-commerce site ourselves.  Also, the links don't have keywords in them so that's not so much a concern.

Still, it sounds like you're saying there's little value in linking out in this situation.  Thanks for the input.