Best practice for links from client sites to your site

[Crocodesign]

As a webdesigner, I tend to place a link to my website in the footer of sites I build.
I consider this a form of brand awareness and reputation building, with nice SEO benefits.

What is the SEO best practice in this case ? Link to a page in your portfolio describing your work on the site ? Sending all the links to the homepage ? What about the link text ?

[KevinBudzynski]

I stopped doing this a couple years ago. If a client is happy with your work, they will most likely refer you (IMHO). Furthermore, with all the algo changes it's best to stay safe considering the link will have the same anchor text, no relevancy, on multiple pages linking to same homepage, not "naturally" earned  and etc.

When I did do it, I linked to our homepage and made it a nofollow link.

[WesleySmits]

These links in the footer pass little to no SEO value anymore. I would stop doing this and encourage your client to spread the news about their new website to local media and have them write an article/press release which refers to you as the designer with a link. If the website contains a blog they could also place a blog post about the new site and give you credit themselves.