Should You Link Back from Client's Website?

[digitalforerunners]

CNN, WJS, Today, and ESPN have their own in-house team of developers and designers. i think that's not a good example.

Having a link to your website from a client website as you say yes is a good advertising as a web developer agency or hosting company. they are outsourcing services which means to them less head ache and saving money because they don't have to buy a server or have a full time in-house developer and SEO specialist which from my point will be a fair trade of having the companies link on their website as well as sometimes the agencies put their clients links on their websites as success stories or current customers.

[SamuelScott]

I would advise against it for one simple reason: You would be directly violating Google's guidelines and setting both you and your clients up for potential penalties.

Google states: Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.

If you actively build a do-follow link on another site for the purposes of affecting search results, then you are doing exactly this.

[KeriMorgret]

CNN, Tribune, and other big companies often have both in-house people and agencies. I know people who are at (or were at) both CNN and the Tribune who are in-house SEOs who work with contracted agencies.

[johnny122]

With owner permission "having your name on the site in unlinked text" seems the best to do.

I remember the penalty story of 'Web Design Yorkshire by Pinpoint Designs' - http://moz.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-google-penalty-removal

<greyhat>Need to vary anchor text if you do it :).</greyhat>

[Trespass]

What about something like : "Site design By Company Link" that is no-follow? That way you can get direct traffic but doesnt pass link juice?

[SamuelScott]

Thumbed-up for being what I would do!

[EGOL]

Yes, that is better.... but you will only be able to do it on websites that tolerate unpaid advertising.

[Trespass]

Ive seen a company in Glasgow that does this to the extreme. In fact they rank for "seo glasgow" and their link profile is made up of all footer links. seo by seo glasgow and they rank well. web design by "web design glasgow" etc

[KeriMorgret]

I'd love to see a case study from a firm talking about the amount of traffic they get from these links, and if it turns into any leads or sales for them.

[Trespass]

To be honest, I doubt anyone really gets much referral business from footer links no follow or not. It clearly a way of getting authority high pr links for free.

[EGOL]

Only robots who don't buy anything.

[SamuelScott]

I hear a potential YouMoz post?

Footer links may not refer a lot of valuable traffic. But other types of pages could. For example: I'm sure the businesses that are on Moz's recommended list get leads. Pages with similar types of (no-follow) links could do the same (rather than footer links).

[SamuelScott]

I'd think -- or hope! -- that Google Penguin or something else would stop that result at some point.

[KeriMorgret]

People who come to Moz are in the same niche as the recommended companies. It'd be way different if I had the same link at the bottom of my site that's about model battleships.

[danwebman]

Under No Circumstances do I see this to be something you should do. I often advise clients to get any link which isn't giving value to the user off the site ASAP.

Often that includes "Site created by ..." Lowest of the low I'm afraid.

So that's a No from me!

[JaneCopland]

As someone who used to work at a company on the Recommended list (and who was in charge of the Contact form) - we did get leads. They were about 80% appropriate for the business model, although a lot were too small or wanting short-term projects (my agency generally took on corporate-level accounts for long periods of time). I would say that this sort of linking is different to just linking to clients, e.g. if we then went on to link to an insurance company that came to us through a Moz Recommended referral. But if your SEO company partners with a PPC agency or design firm, provides some services to the other and sends out a relevant link, that seems a little more relevant.

On the other hand, I hate these discussions about what we're "allowed" to link to

[churchwebsites]

This post is deleted!

[churchwebsites]

Hi everyone

We have read through all these comments, but still not sure what to do about this. We do church web design, and our link would be on church websites. That seems relevant to me.

These responses go back to 2014. Is there any current advice or information on this topic?

Thanks:-)