Site-wide links for internet bureau

[kayintveen_MD]

Hi mozzers,

We are a internet firm building several sites and webshops every month. On almost every site we build we put a link in the footer as some kind of signature of our work. (similar to artists on their painting).

Those are often dofollow links to our main page. We do get several new clients of those links each year. but in seo perspective, is this a really bad thing, or do you think because its not solely for SEO purposes its ok, but its not adding any extra weight because of some domains got 10 pages with our link on it, some ecommerce stores like 7.000. I can imagen google to give the same amount of importance to the 10 or 7k site.

Whats your idea on it?
Our website is: www.microdesign.nl

[eyepaq]

Those links are for sure marked by Google as NP (No Propagate) so it's like they have the no follow attribute - chances are high that those links won't count anyway from an SEO point of view.

Unless you will end up with a 6 or 7 digit as far as amount of this type of links I wouldn’t be worry and I would keep them as do follow as some might count - even if only a small % out of the entire bunch.

Google is smart enough to dal with those type of links - they do have a separate approach for "design by" or "develop by" type of links.

Cheers.

[kayintveen_MD]

Great response. But I half following you.

Do you say Google will think its spammy and won't propogate any link juice or just like a few.

in that case wouldent it be better to dofollow only the home link?

[eyepaq]

Do you say Google will think its spamy and won't propagate any link juice or just like a few.

** No, not spamy - but so many people are doing that and those links should not count and send out PR anyway - since those are not "natural" links. You won't get into issues for those - is just that google won't count them.

There was an incident a few years back with a WordPress theme provider that had a similar link in the footer and the theme got very popular and so they got a lot of links. At that stage they got into issues as those links where "seen" as spamy - but after google "fixed" that case now they also have a algorithmic rule to treat them as they should but without hiting the target site - as again - a lot of people are doing that, it make sense and they are not SEOs to add "nofollow" so Google is taking care of that on their own.

in that case wouldent it be better to dofollow only the home link?

** In my opinion that will look spamy - since it's clear you need to cut down from the site wide links but still have those links on your SEO "campaign"

Personally I would leave them as they are - it make sense to have them as you said those are bringing in referral traffic and some might even "count" and send some PR your way.