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Are there any good ways/techniques that don't infringe on my rankings or reverse links? Is one link per site good enough? Should the link be on their homepage or within the site? Does it matter?
Thanks in advance. I didn't see another tread on this topic.
Just an idea: If you want to be sort of unobtrusive you can put something like a "contact the webmaster" link on the contact page. Might feel more functional and little less of a self promotion that way.
When I walk into some of my favorite local businesses, I don't see a sign on the door announcing who the contractor was, or who the architect was. Wouldn't that be tacky?
What we do instead is list our company name in the Author META tag so the nosy-bodies can find us that way, and we ask our clients to give our name out to any customers who like their sites and ask who did it. We've received a LOT of referral traffic that way.
I guess it doesn't help our page rank, but it sure has helped the bottom line.
Link to the designer: OK.
Hidden link: not OK.
I don't remember seeing Google mention a problem with attributions, but they have told us that they don't like hidden links.
As ciml stated, hidden is out of the question, but depending on the design, I generally add a 'Designed by' mention in the copyright area at the bottom - otherwise I place it at the bottom of the 'About' page.
I question whether Google provides much benefit from small anchor text though ('designed by' links may even be discounted in their algo).
('designed by' links may even be discounted in their algo).
No, a link is a link :)
Craig
So don't expect much.
I think this is how they identify and deprecate guestbook links as well.
This is all I'm going to say on the subject. :)
[edited by: martinibuster at 3:52 pm (utc) on Aug. 30, 2003]
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martinibuster, interesting input. I had a hunch there might be something to that.
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Interesting. Most of us (except GoogleGuy) seem to expect that to happen some day, but if it's started already then we've been slow to see it.
You will see that the top spot in many sections are websites with a measly PR 6.
In the "M" section, the top spot is PR 7, but the second spot is occupied by a PR5!
Something to ponder...
The links won't pass all of the PR if it's coming from an off-topic website
I seriously doubt that Google can analyze a site's topic. Froogle can't accurately categorize a site yet either, afaik.
Even if Googlebot was intelligent enough, I'm not sure that penalizing off-topic links makes sense. I think that links back to the designer are a powerful and very legitimate way to build PR. All you have to do is incorporate them into the design so they don't look tacky.
As a site designer I ** DONT ** want to have links on all of my client's pages that link back to me
In fact I dont have any links on their sites back to me, neither do I have a www site anymore that directly promotes my services though I may do one again sometime.
I want my clients sites to be as effective as possible in focussing, promoting, emphasising and selling my clients offerings.
When my client's sites are as successful as they can be I have done my job well and I get the word of mouth and references that I need that way.
Plus the more money my clients sites make the more money they contine to spend with me.
Passing your clients PR back to your design site rather than spreading it round their own site or sites is slightly reducing their sites effectiveness and the advert for your services will sometimes distract from what they are selling.
All imho of course.
"The links won't pass all of the PR if it's coming from an off-topic website".........really?
How about a web designer with 3 links of PR3 from entirely unrelated clients, amd who has a PR6?
Hope that makes sense :-)
By all means don't take it as gospel- in matters of the algo pretty much everything is apocryphal. You can take that info and investigate it or you can take that info and use it to clean out your ears.
What I've found is that in my city there are a ton of web designers competing for "<insert cityname> web design" as the SE phrase of choice. All of the links back to my site use this phrase and rarely have my company's name. So, should every page on one of my client's sites have my link to help me? Or, is one link on one page of the whole site enough?
Actually, links back to a web designer are relevant, since they're the ones who designed the site, so there's good reasoning behind it. There's good reason for doing it, too. Then there's also the reciprocal factor to consider.
Question, still is one link per site enough. I know when I check links at Google and usually only one link per site comes up. But when I view omitted results, many more show up there - muliples within my client's sites.
As far as those concerned about placing a 'designed by' link there to begin with, part of our package is to make sure our clients are prominently listed in dozens of our own sites - so they are certainly not losing PR, and if our client's prospective customers are looking for yellow widgets, I doubt very seriously that they are going to lose many customers clicking on a small 'designed by' link among a small copyright notice at the bottom that few people read anyway.
Additionally, this will not be good for AskJeeves. AJ looks at communities of sites that form around a given subject. If all of your links are off-topic, then this can only harm your AJ performance, imo.
Actually, links back to a web designer are relevant...
They are relevant so far as who created the site, but not relevant topically, and therefore subject to PR deprecation, according to the Director of Consumer Web Products at Google. My follow-up question to her was framed around the web designer/client scenario.
Some folks are of the opinion that she isn't an acceptable authority on this topic. You have to decide for yourself.
I'm not saying one way or the other- only reporting what I heard.
Mack.
I don't think it is terribly obtrusive and none of my clients mind - they get a lot more clicks from my portfolio pages than I do from my credit link.
according to a Google department director
More from the horse's mouth... At the last PubCon someone asked a Google rep about this, more from a concern that having the links in the footer of his client's sites might draw a penalty. The Google rep said it wasn't a concern, that it's very natural and it's in the footer anyway. That last part is what caught my ear... I can't remember if he came right out and said that the links in the footer wouldn't count as much, but that was the feeling I left with.
This wouldn't stop me from putting a link in the footer though... you've got to take these little tidbits with a grain of salt. ;)
As a site designer I want to have links on all of my client's pages that link back to me (to help with my rank).
Cgallent, who knows, there could also be a bit of averaging-out the donated Pagerank of web desinger signing as discussed in this thread:
[webmasterworld.com...]
Here goes.....don't do it cgallent, if you do your bankers will never thankyou for it!
The links won't pass all of the PR if it's coming from an off-topic website (i.e. a website that's not about web design), according to a Google department director
Interesting comment you picked up there Martinibuster, I think I won't use it to clean out my ears..
One could assume that [adobe.com...] -
the Acrobat Reader download page - would similarily get discounted in Pagerank as well though? (although 1,040,000 Google backlinks still help I suppose - BTW that's the highest I have seen around)
Assuming Google would or could really implement this "Topic Sensitive Pagerank pass-through":
If Google would misjudge on- or off-topicness in 25% of the cases, Pagerank-wise, it would probably still give a more correct "realtive importance towards topic of page" statement, than without taking topicness into account, as was the case with buying high Pagerank links indiscriminately in the past.
I'm all for believing the Consumer Web Products director's words are true ;)
Googleguy can the Algo-director computationally stomach these extra costs?
1) I'm going to write case studies for each of them and then have my link come to there so the page is on topic for the link.
2) Any thoughts on using a layer for the credit to put it behind something or be revealed with a click or something like that?
I can't remember if he came right out and said that the links in the footer wouldn't count as much, but that was the feeling I left with.
Hmm. Interesting comment.
I think as far as on-the-page relevance is concerned, I've always assumed that anything in the footer would have the least effect upon what the page is relevant for, by virtue of it being last (i.e. the stuff at the top of the page is more important than the stuff at the bottom of the page).
So maybe what he was making a reference to was that it wouldn't matter to the relevance for "red widgets" if you got links to "John Doe's Web-design-net-web.com [by the way, the domain Web-design-net-web.com is available]). That the algo would zero in on "Red Widgets" and regard less what was written in the footer- unless it was relevant.
Has my diet soda kicked in yet? Does that make any sense?
No martinibuster, it looks to me that on page text at the bottom is just as good as on page text anywhere else.
My take on the bottom line.....nevermind the quality, feel the width :)
