Backlinks from customers' websites. Good or bad? Violation?

[vtmoz]

Hi all,

Let's say a company holds 100 customers and somehow getting a backlink from all of their websites. Usually we see "powered by xyz", etc. Is something wrong with this? Is this right backlinks strategy? Or violation of Google guidelines? Generally most of the customers's websites do not have good DA; will it beneficial getting a backlinks from such average below DA websites?

Thanks

[dMaLasp]

Hi,

Check this Whiteboard Friday. I think you will find it very useful for your question.

https://moz.com/blog/backlinks-maximize-benefits-avoid-problems-whiteboard-friday

[benesmartin]

Hey there,

It won't be much beneficial.

The "Powered by XYZ" tends to be in the footer which has no value as a back link. Also, it doesn't seem to be the relevant anchor text for your business. If all of your back links are through the same anchor text, it could hurt your page as there's no diversification.

I guess the websites are off-topic as well (your customers are probably from many fields). Link has a value if there's a context and the website is about a similar topic. Otherwise, it will seem weird to Google that they point back to your site if it makes actually no sense to them.

Hope it helps. Cheers, Martin

[vtmoz]

Martin, thanks for the answer.

But I wonder how many companies still manged to favour towards such links even they got penalised or eve if they know they going to be. If there is no benefit from these, many websites still employing. But I think it's a matter of reputation too when we receive such backlinks. I have seen some companies provide page creation and similar services where there will be a definite backlink from all of their customers' web pages to their website (may be sub domain) but successfully growing in terms of SEO. Any thoughts?

[benesmartin]

Hey there,

It's definitely beneficial for your reputation and traffic to your website. However, from the SEO standpoint, it has very low or no value. Therefore, I'd suggest to make those links nofollow.

Regarding the successful companies mentioned above, such a note in the footer could result in more brand searches. Google then may see that the websites are interesting for the users and could give some bonus points to them. However, those types of links are incomparable to the ones in content through a relevant anchor text.

Hope it helps. Ready for some other questions. Cheers, Martin

[vtmoz]

Thank you for much elaborated answer. I strongly feel this exercise is completely legitimate and "nofollow" is not really required. Because I have gone through some of these cases where successful websites are not employing nofollow. Moreover this is like we are nofollowing internal links which was not being encouraged much these times. I agree with you that these kind of footer links will not provide much value but other similar links from main page (form filling links) will be helpful somehow. And one more interesting thing I noticed from one of our competitor's website has the same scenario where they are partially using the keyword but not penalised.

[DickensLawGroup]

Good info, thanks all!