Web Designers - How do you handle your link in the clients footer?

by qu4rk

Posted: 9 years ago 18 replies

OFFLINE MARKETING

When you design a site for clients, how do you handle putting your link in the footer of their new website?

Do you just put it there without discussing it with them?
Do you just not put it there?
Do you give them a discount for putting it there?
Something else?

#clients #designers #footer #handle #link #web

Ron Lafuddy 9 years ago

Since this is a marketing forum, you may have better luck asking website design questions
in that sub-forum.

Just a thought.
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- savidge4 9 years ago
  
  I don't place a link in the footer. I will depending on certain things place a programmers note in the code.
  
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LeatherDropshipping

9 years ago

Originally Posted by qu4rk

When you design a site for clients, how do you handle putting your link in the footer of their new website?

Do you just put it there without discussing it with them?
Yes

Do you just not put it there?
If you put out a mediocre site you don't want to take credit for it.

Do you give them a discount for putting it there?
If they ask you for one, tell them you will include 2 months hosting!

Something else?
Most expect it, those that do not, probably don't even notice. Just slip it in there, it's worth it for the backlink. Your customers will love it!

See replies above in bold..

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tryinhere

9 years ago

Originally Posted by LeatherDropshipping

See replies above in bold..

seems like outdated advice from the 1980's and mostly a bullshit practice in today's world and bad advice to hand out.

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LeatherDropshipping

9 years ago

Originally Posted by tryinhere

seems like outdated advice from the 1980's and mostly a bullshit practice in today's world and bad advice to hand out.

So what do you suggest tryinhere? You were quick to throw out dig, but your post was very light on usable advice for the OP. A "website design by" link is still very much the standard in my area of the country for small to medium size business sites. Is it not in your area?

If your firm designs a website for Pepsi, then I can see consulting with them before adding a link, but not for Joe Blow's Towing Service. Why would you NOT give your business credit on your hard work?

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tryinhere

9 years ago

Originally Posted by LeatherDropshipping

Was not taking a dig, and I thought my reply was my view in as much detail as yours, but to explain in a generic way, adding a powered by or web by thing was cool in the 80 and beyond and was akin to riding a dragster bike in the 70's, you were cool.

But today if I was to pay out of my own pocket for somebody to build me a site, and then that person had an attitude of putting their link on my site with out discussing it, to insult me with verbal dribble of two months hosting for allowing you the same rights to slap it there, and O what the heck slip it in anyway, would end in a very short 2 work conversation.

Not sure where you live, but if that's how things are still being done then I understand your response, I just doubt most of the real word would take to that practice any more.

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LeatherDropshipping

9 years ago

Great Discussion all, I have learned a lot from the differing perspectives on this. I sure hope its been helpful to you qu4rk!

I found a very relevant post while digging deeper into the SEO ramifications of my first post in this thread.

Do you Design Websites? No Follow Your

To quickly paraphrase, this exact question came up in a Google Hangout with John Mueller. He recommends designers use a no follow on the "designed by" links to avoid any future trouble with an unnatural link profile back to your site.

It seems that from an SEO standpoint,( as of Feb 2015), it will not hurt you to use a footer link assuming that you rel no follow them.

From a design standpoint, maybe this is a dying practice. I would venture to guess that it seems to depend on where you live. For the designer, the question becomes are they worth it at all, if not for an SEO benefit?
If even one client will be offended or upset, maybe not.

- Leather Drop Shipping

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savidge4

9 years ago

Originally Posted by LeatherDropshipping

To quickly paraphrase, this exact question came up in a Google Hangout with John Mueller. He recommends designers use a no follow on the "designed by" links to avoid any future trouble with an unnatural link profile back to your site.

It seems that from an SEO standpoint,( as of Feb 2015), it will not hurt you to use a footer link assuming that you rel no follow them.

Is this type of thing said between Mueller and Cutts? sure it is.. is it absolutely accurate, well I would argue the point. If you go here: https://www.quicksprout.com/2014/04/...o-you-get-one/ and then scroll down about 10% to "Co-citation and co-occurrence" things start to get a bit interesting.

To understand THIS is to, as I believe understand the future ( or present as I like to think ) of SEO. Linking WITHOUT links. Take these concepts and then scroll up a bit on the page linked above and look for "Relevancy of linking site" and then read down from there.

Now lets go back and look what Mueller states... does it still hold true? I know I could argue the point.. oh wait, I am already. If it were up to Google... ALL links would be no follow. but given the idea that they know the difference between a "Text" reference to a site / page, a "no follow" link to a site / page, and a "follow" link to a site / page does it really matter?

There are some very recent no-follow case studies made that really suggest the exact opposite of what Mueller and Google have said for years in general. Mathew Woodward I believe has the starts of a study from earlier this year as I recall. I personally have gone towards a more context based content linking structure over the last few years.

I would say 90% or more of my overall link profile and work is no-follow across more than a few sites. The importance here is "Relevancy" and "Context" not just within the link from page itself but everything surrounding it.

So from my prospective, a link or even the text from non relevant sites such as your client list can only in the long run cause more harm than good.

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LeatherDropshipping

9 years ago

savidge4, thank you very much for that super breakdown! I must admit, overall relevancy is certainly poor linking from your client sites footer. That, is undeniably true. You hit on some pretty thought provoking issues with that and gave me a lot of homework to do. Awesome stuff!

I feel like we're gonna see this thread packaged into a WSO

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savidge4

9 years ago

Originally Posted by LeatherDropshipping

LOL and to think this is only the tip of the iceberg on the topic! Read well my friend, read well!

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savidge4

9 years ago

Originally Posted by tryinhere

seems like outdated advice from the 1980's and mostly a bullshit practice in today's world and bad advice to hand out.

I would say very correct information given. So why the would you NOT want to place a link on site you built?

Lets start with SEO. Chances are better than good that your site will not add benefit as a link out. IF you, say have 100 website your have created, you then have 100 backlinks. Chances are better than good the links will have the URL as text ( maybe the business name ) and they will drop right to YOUR home page. Starting to look like link farming no?

So then using an example given here, "Pepsi". They have a firm that builds and maintains their site.. why isn't there a link there? Oh that's right they asked and mean ol Pepsi and they said NO... haha

NOW.. if you really wanted to place your name on the site, I might consider a text only tag in the footer. And like I stated earlier I have used html notation in the past to tag the site

Links in todays environment are just asking for trouble.

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LeatherDropshipping

9 years ago

Thanks for your thoughtful answer savidge, I guess I can see where your coming from an SEO prospective, but I have a hard time believing there is going to be a negative penalty applied for multiple links back from your clients page. I think you could always drop in a rel nofollow if you were that worried about it. Please tell me if you think that I am way off here..

What about from a business prospective? For a designer, sites ARE your portfolio. If someone appreciates the design, the logical spot to look is the bottom for a designers site. Having no link or at least a name is opportunity lost IMO.

I really appreciate a good discussion about this, and I am here to expand my horizons. That being said, I will stand by my opinion that the only reason not to have a link in the footer is if you do not want to claim the site as your work, or if it doesn't look right as part of the overall design. The floor is yours savidge4, or tryinhere. ...

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savidge4

9 years ago

As I see it...

My philosophies on SEO in particular are a bit far fetched to some. I am more interested to CONTEXT than I am anything else. I am a firm believer in a rel no-follow linking structure. Yes, Follow links have vastly more strength. But, I am finding that consistent well placed no follow links work very well.

However, as an example I were to place a link to a site in my WF signature I would INSTANTLY get 3060+ links to the page I linked to. No follow or not, that can help and or hurt my sites / pages overall link profile. Unless the page in particular and the site in general is about IM.. I would say it would hurt.

To dig into SEO a bit further, I would say that ANY link that is on a page that really doesn't have to be there, shouldn't be. Say for example you have a page with 4 links on it, and you add your "Built by" link. The difference between 4 and 5, in terms of SEO that is 25% link juice vs 20%. Dilute that even further to 14 links adding 1 to make 15. that dilutes 7.14% down to 6.66%.

I know there are some reading this right now and they are like.. .48% really? who cares? I CARE... LOL. that .48% could be the difference between a page 2 listing and a page 1 listing let alone a #1 listing and a #5 listing. And when we are speaking in these terms... Follow / no-follow doesn't matter, a link is a link.

The whole argument that the site is your "Portfolio" I get the argument, but in turn.. that is what the "Portfolio" page on YOUR site is for, with the advantage of being in an environment that is developing trust and working towards conversion.

So let me ask you this @LeatherDropshipping... if I do SEO services for a site should I put a link in the footer? or how about CRO services? Or writing copy? A site could have a whole list of contractor links in the footer. I know sounds ridiculous doesn't it? but that customer site is in the profile of all of those service people.

Another bit of a twist in this discussion. I build sites based on function... So I very much follow "form follows function" as a design rule. I get someone that contacts me and says "I really like site XYZ I want one just like that." That's great the site they reference is for a Lawyer, and their business is a brick and mortar shoe store. You end up with 2 totally different functions that may not exactly fit into the same aesthetic and layout.

As a designer.. you are then being difficult... they say they want this, and you say <wince> no you really need this. The rub? They have only seen your work, vs getting a referral that has heard about the process and results of your work. Its almost if not actually a good lead vs a bad one. and this un itself would be a good enough reason in my book NOT to place a link.

Originally Posted by LeatherDropshipping

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massiveray

9 years ago

Ok so I'm 100% with savidge on this, from an SEO perspective, it's a bad idea, nofollow or not.

Even if I disagree that the authority that flows through every link on every page is split evenly in the way he described.

From a click through rate and "missed opportunity" perspective, I see the argument.

I had this discussion with myself in my head about 2 years ago and have been using a pretty simple solution that solves both of the above arguments.

I place a link in the footer, to a page on their site, that is about my company (and can even have a small portoflio), and contains a link back to my site if people are interested in web dev.

This works for SEO as it doesn't create a bajillion links straight to your site, the link is also on a page about web dev so no relevancy/context issues. And it still works from a referral perspective because if people click to see your work, they still get that and can contact you.

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LeatherDropshipping

9 years ago

Thanks for the input on this massiveray, I am curious how you handle that "about you" page with the client? Is there a discussion prior or any discount for having that page or is it just a part of your standard offering?

It think it will be interesting to see how this is handled in different regions and countries.

Thanks!!

-Leather Drop Shipping
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massiveray

9 years ago

I just put it in, if they ask to remove it, it's not a big problem, but I've never had an issue.

Originally Posted by LeatherDropshipping

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savidge4

9 years ago

Love this idea... still not overly excited about a link that based on relevance and Context is not a match. yes looking at the page specifically it would be, but the site specifically and it would not. You are a web developer with a link back from a plumber.

I think in this instance we are not really so much looking for the link back as much as we are trying to obtain a possibly missed opportunities.

So what if we took this concept even a step further... added the about the designer page and didn't create a link but left the contact information; Name, Address, Phone number etc. Think of this as creating a "Citation".

Now in turn on your own page you would have a Portfolio and for each customer you would have a customer page that would go over project objectives, give before and afters, etc. and THEN added a bit of a schema tag...

HTML Code:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/LocalBusiness">

<link itemprop=”additionalType” href=”http://www.productontology.org/doc/yoursite” />


 <span itemprop="name">yourcompanyname</span>
 <link itemprop="url" href="http://www.yoursite.com/">
<img itemprop="logo" src="yoursite/logo.png" />

<link itemprop="sameAs" href="CUSTOMER SITE">

<div itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress">
<span itemprop="streetAddress">YOURSTREETADDRESS</span>
<span itemprop="addressLocality">CITY</span>
<span itemprop="addressRegion">STATE</span>
<span itemprop="postalCode">ZIPCODE</span>
</div>
<span itemprop="geo" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/GeoCoordinates">
<meta itemprop="latitude" content="29.2929292" />
<meta itemprop="longitude" content="-90.9090909" />
</span>
</div>

Ok so above I would like to point 2 things out. #1 being line 2 "additionalType" I think this is a rather cool addition to your code to further define and categorize your business. Anyone that is a web designer knows there is not a specific internet anything category in schema ( other than internet café ) and this is how you define what it is you do. Here is an article that will help you better understand that line and how to create it: How to Pick (or Improvise) the Right Schema.org Markup for Your Local Business | LocalVisibilitySystem.com

#2 the next line to look at becomes line 6 in the code, "sameAs". As I am sure many of you know this is the line(s) that you can use to create links to your existing citation urls; G+ YP, Yelp etc.

In this case because it will be set on a page specifically about a single customer we can then use the 'sameAs' citation link to goto the page mentioned above on the customers site that has all of the citation information.

In the world of Local SEO which would you rather have.. a low value link back or a Citation?

Welcome to my world of link building without links.

Originally Posted by massiveray

I place a link in the footer, to a page on their site, that is about my company (and can even have a small portoflio), and contains a link back to my site if people are interested in web dev.

This works for SEO as it doesn't create a bajillion links straight to your site, the link is also on a page about web dev so no relevancy/context issues. And it still works from a referral perspective because if people click to see your work, they still get that and can contact you.

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massiveray

9 years ago

Brilliant addition.

Originally Posted by savidge4

HTML Code:

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/LocalBusiness">

<link itemprop="additionalType" href="http://www.productontology.org/doc/yoursite" />


 <span itemprop="name">yourcompanyname</span>
 <link itemprop="url" href="http://www.yoursite.com/">
<img itemprop="logo" src="yoursite/logo.png" />

<link itemprop="sameAs" href="CUSTOMER SITE">

<div itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress">
<span itemprop="streetAddress">YOURSTREETADDRESS</span>
<span itemprop="addressLocality">CITY</span>
<span itemprop="addressRegion">STATE</span>
<span itemprop="postalCode">ZIPCODE</span>
</div>
<span itemprop="geo" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/GeoCoordinates">
<meta itemprop="latitude" content="29.2929292" />
<meta itemprop="longitude" content="-90.9090909" />
</span>
</div>

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