Is Sitewide Credit Link Good or Bad in 2015?

[Jubaer96]

We are a web design agency thus we get a good number of links (footer) from our client's site. According to Matt Cutt, Google considers all the sitewide links to 1. So is it okay to have those links?

Note: Those links are do-follow and most with 2 anchor text. "Web Design" by "Company Name"  and "Website Development" by."Company Name".

Thanks

[donford]

HI Jubaer,

Last year, Cyrus Shepard did a White Board Friday and touched on this very subject.
REF: https://moz.com/blog/the-rules-of-link-building-whiteboard-friday

Quote: "...

Don't link externally in the footer

A couple of other rules that I see people violate all the time that Google has made painfully clear in the past few months: Don't link externally in the footer. Just don't. I'm not going to go into the reasons. Just don't do that.

Avoid site-wide links

By the same token, except for navigation, avoid site-wide links. This is something that we've known for years. If someone links to you externally, site-wide, in the side bar, that's ripe for Penguin-style links...."

The idea of linking to your site on every page is an old tactic used to generate higher DA / PA for the linked site. There is of course something to be said about a company that is proud of its work and is happy to put their name on it, but in general the idea of harvesting clients link juice in an effort to boost yours is a bit pretentious.

At best you get credit for 1 link on the site, at worst you move the bar towards getting a penalty for spamming.

My advice, if your clients are okay with it, pick a page like "about us" or "contacts" and put a small blurb, site powered By "WordPress" designed by YourDesignSite.com. This would be 2 external links and draw a correlation for scrapers between the CMS, the Keyword Design(ed) and Your site.

Hope this makes sense and helps,

Don

[Eric_Rohrback]

Googles guidelines on link schemes covers this:

"Additionally, creating links that weren’t editorially placed or vouched for by the site’s owner on a page, otherwise known as unnatural links, can be considered a violation of our guidelines. Here are a few common examples of unnatural links that may violate our guidelines:

(scroll down the page a little bit)......

• Widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites"

In addition to Don's suggestion to review Cyrus' video, I would strongly recommend reviewing Google's guidelines on the subject. They aren't specifically saying links from a client site to yours, but it's pretty clear if you're putting a do-follow link to your site from a site you built for a client... that's a no-go since it was placed there by you and not editorially placed by your client.

[EGOL]

A lot of designers believe that these links drive business.   The question is how much business do they drive away because website owners don't want keyword anchor text links in their footer.   The design agency wants two anchor text links, the SEO wants his anchor text links, a logo person thinks he needs a link.

I believe that a lot of website owners, who have seen their friends, or maybe one of their own websites get whacked for penguin, unnatural link, etc. penalties and be sunk in the SERPs for over a year, are now either afraid enough or smart enough to realize that a bunch of site-wide, keyword, money term, do-follow, anchor text links in their footer isn't "best practice" for the owner of a website.

Can you name any SEOs who post intelligent content here at Moz who have two money-term, keyworded, site-wide, do-followed, anchor-text links in their footer pointing to a design agency?

Added:  Just placing "Web Design by Egol" in the footer, without a link, may have positive SEO value.  It is a mention of your brand with no link and visitors who see it and want to get in contact with you can simply search using those words.

[Jubaer96]

Thanks for your Great information. Is it okay to put our brand name there with link without the keyword?

or simply just remove all the links from all the sites. Isn't that a bad idea? Cause 1. we'll lose a huge number of links. And 2. Deleting links which are not suspicious to google, might harm the site.

[Jubaer96]

Yeah, my clients are okay with that. Cause we only put a link on the footer ones our client approve that. But the thing is, we develop the whole site. Not using wordpress or joomla. So either way, there will be 1 name and link.

[EGOL]

These links could be helpful or harmful.  Google says that they don't like site-wide links, that they don't like keyword links.  You can listen to Google or take your chances.

[BlueprintMarketing]

unless its terms of service or privacy policy something to that affect. You will eat your crawl budget and Google has banned or frowned upon designers and developers getting links by putting it on client sites. Even though it is relevant it is still a no-no.

Hope this helps,

[Jubaer96]

Thanks for your info. May I get any reference?