Will this linking strategy hurt my rankings?

[Zoheb M]

Hi Warriors,

I am thinking of releasing a package of free web templates with a link to my website at the bottom of each one of them. Of course the users have the option of removing it, but Im sure a decent percentage of them will leave it on there.

Is this is good idea?

The reason I am asking is because these templates can be used for absolutely any market. The templates are 'general' themed.

And Im worried that backlinks from say adult themed sites and other unrelated niches will hurt my rankings. Is there any truth to this?

Thanks!
Zoheb

[Mark Brian]

It will not hurt your ranking. This is a common practice used by Wordpress theme designers.

[Brett Topovski]

No that would not hurt anything, in fact if done properly, it could offer a few potential benefits.

You could could link back to your website with image based links and anchor text to help increase backlinks and image based links could host the image file on your server. When someone would visit a web page with image button, it would generate a hit to your website.

Most people would most likely remove or replace footer backlinks, but if you get lucky, a few may not get removed.

[Hellas]

It will not hurt your ranking. But if you do it inproperly then search engine can disregard your links. Also avoid hidden links in your themes.

[Tyrus Antas]

You can add a clause to your terms of use that explicitly forbid people from removing the link. Obviously not everybody will follow the rules, but it will certainly help.

Tyrus

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Zoheb M

And Im worried that backlinks from say adult themed sites and other unrelated niches will hurt my rankings. Is there any truth to this?

No. They won't hurt you. At the worst, Google simply won't count the links.

And don't worry too much about adult content sites. As long as the adult site owner isn't engaging in any blackhat tactics like malicious scripts the links may actually be good PR backlinks for your site. And, like I said, the worst thing that would happen is that the link wouldn't be counted by Google.