Are "Powered By..." type footer backlinks good or bad for SEO?

[andy.bigbangthemes]

Hi guys,

We're running a software company which is also selling WP themes amongst other things. We've heard recently that footer backlinks like "Powered by BigBangThemes" might do more harm than good. Some clients usually forget to change them - so we want to make sure we stop including them in case this is true.

Thanks!

[paints-n-design]

Sidewide Footer Links (ideal with Keywordrich Anchor) are awful. Nofollow Links shouldn't be a Problem, so you can ad that in your themes. You could kill them by yourselfe or change the default value for linking to theme author.

There couldn't be any good thing on such a link, so nofollow I think its ok, no link is better
Thats 2010-SEO and burried long time ago.

For the Links you allready have: You know your Linking-phrase, so:

search the web for that phrase,
sort them by domain,
make a disavow-file with these,
Submit them (thats what I would do)

By the way: Some Theme-Users are not to clever in SEO/Webdesign/Programming - they may simply change your link-class to "display:none" or change the link-color to background color. (I have seen a lot crazy things, including Theme by: zensored cheapest flights

[andy.bigbangthemes]

Hi Andreas,

Your advice is absolutely golden. Exactly what we thought! We're going to make sure to address this asap.

Thanks!