Is it ok for a web design company to have a branded footer link on their client's sites?

[PixelgemsCreative]

As a web design company that does put a branded link in the footer on every website we do (it's part of the contract), we have not felt any effects from Penguin. We have follow links that usually say "Website Design by Pixelgems"

We host everything on our own server, and we have actually had our rankings go up since Penguin, but that could be due to better title tags and content. Is the general recommendation to make them no-follow links?

P.S. - I am not removing them. We do work we are proud of and get a lot of referral business, and business from people who follow these links. They are part of the price of having a website from us.

[leatherhidestore]

Great thread.  I just realized my site has a site wide footer link from my developer and I had no clue!  Irving stated this in an earlier post:

"if the links are nofollowed, both parties lose, PR is still leaked from the owners site and benefit is not gained for the website company"

How can this be?  I thought nofollow was the very tool we used so we would not leak PR?

[EGOL]

When nofollow was first announced, Google said that it could be used to "sculpt" pagerank.  Then Google changed their mind and allowed pagerank to evaporate - but they didn't tell anybody for a while.

So, just because Google says something today, you can't count on it being true forever, because they can change their mind but keep their mouths shut.

[leatherhidestore]

Okay, so I have a resource page listing related websites from trade folks that  I know. I added these sites as a courtesy but nofollowed them of course.  Are you saying that this is harmful and these links should be converted to a reciprocal do follow and if not, removed altogether?

Here is the page if you are interested:

http://www.leatherhidestore.com/leathercrafters

[EGOL]

If you allow the links to be followed the recipient gains benefit and you lose PR through each link.

If you nofollow the links then recipient does not get PR and you still lose it.

What I described above his how Google most recently said they do things.

Are you saying that this is harmful and these links should be converted to a reciprocal do follow and if not, removed altogether?

I can't say anything about reciprocals.

I have pages similar to yours where I simply link to resources.  I don't have any relationship with the websites receiving the links.  This is simply a resource that might be helpful to my visitors.

If I owned your website I would optimize that page to compete for a relevant keyword.   The resources pages that I have hold good google rankings for good keywords and pull in more traffic than they send out..

One thing for sure is that I would not call it a "links" page.

[Laurean]

Only with the company's permission. I don't see much harm for this since we aren't in the "hosting game". Although we will host if we need to. Our clients are proud of the work we do and don't mind showing us off. Of course, we're pretty good at referring clients to them outside of how we've been contracted (ie:word of mouth). So, I think it boils down to agreement & relationship. Everything does.

[gfiedel]

I'm with Randy Epp on this but it does raise questions and concern for me. I am surprised by the critical attitude connected with opinions that many of you share that designers shouldn't include links to their sites. I've never encountered that sentiment before. We are also a web design company and follow the same practice: we include our intention and request for permission to place a brand link on our client's site in both the proposal and our contract. 99.99% of all our clients over close to 15 years in business have been more than happy to include that reference to us on their site. It also helps them in their promotion of us. The one exception was a company that requires a particular level of confidentiality and was unable to allow it. Our prospects also appreciate the ease with which they can contact us when they stumble upon a site they love and want to know who designed it. I understand that footer links like these have low value and have also fairly recently learned that they may be perceived by Google as unnatural links. We experienced a disasterous loss in page rank for our two top keywords in late December 2012. But we have had no warnings in Webmaster Tools and I am hoping our drop was not due to these links, but rather to a lack of other quality links compared to our competition. Especially since other keywords had no loss and our brand comes up #1 which implies no penalties. Additionally, our competitors also have footer links on their client sites. My main question around these links has been whether to go back and create variation in the anchor text and after reading this thread if we should go back and change to nofollow. Either way, I suspect that tedious amoun of time consuming labor is better spent creating more quality content and creating a link building plan.

[Wolfpacksweet]

Hi Guys

Very interesting read

I think it's abnormal not to leave a signature on your clients website. I really think it's a sign of pride of doing great work. It's the only way to showcase your brand, how is a website any different to any other manufactured good eg car, shoes, etc? In addition when you showing someone your portfolio it's always good to have a cross reference so they can verify it's your companies work. I think what is dirty is when people change the link to claim the credit for work they have not completed, then pick up the benefit of the link.. Cheers for sharing.

[SamDarcy93]

Check this article out really helpful

http://seoaltitude.com/the-web-design-footer-link-debate/