Footer sitewide links

[Chas-295721]

Here's a question - does having a "website designed by" reference in the footer of every page of one of your clients  help or hurt? I have a major university .edu that I designed a site for one of their departments and it is just about to launch and they've allowed me to put a reference in the footer.

I've had pretty good luck with this on my other clients' sites, but didn't know if this practice is seen as spammy.

Thanks

[GeorgeDavis]

While I don't think it's the BEST possible link you could hope for, I don't see how this could hurt at all.  I know that a huge portion of the "Free Themes/Layouts" community is based on the principle that giving out free work helps to build rankings via those links in the footer.  Since the university is kosher with you doing it, I would jump at the chance.

[Cyle]

Chas,

In general having the same kind of links coming to your site does make your backlink profile less organic and Google will probably devalue some of them. Also, Google in general devalues footer links.

There are 12 types of links: (http://www.stuntdubl.com/2006/08/21/link-types/ here is a link to a blog post by stuntdubl) This post was published in 2006, so I would add social media links to it, but other than that the info is good.

1. Authority links
2. Directory links
3. Reciprocal links
4. Run of site links
5. One way links from friends or related sites
6. Edu and .Gov links
7. Radio station, television, magazine, or newspaper links
8. Press release links
9. Article bio links
10. RSS/ Blog aggregated links
11. Comment and Profile Links
12. Presell Page Links

If 90% of your links coming to your site are run of site links at the bottom of your page, you could probably benefit from diversifying your blacklinks.  Read through the post and start coming up with some strategies to get different types of links to your site.  One idea is to change a couple of your run of site links to a Presell Page Links.  This could help you get some more value out of the run of site links, IF majority of the links coming to your site are run of site links.

However, that being said I would take any kind of .edu link that I could get.

I hope this helps,

Cyle

[BTeubner]

Can't hurt, although I think it would look more 'natural' to get a link from just one page (even if footer), ideally a hiuh-level page.