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Web Design firm links on all the sites they make

         

indiabackoffice

1:37 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Case1 - Our company makes static websites for various clients. Now for all the website we make we keep our link at the bottom of all the pages. Like say " This site is designed by My Company Name" and the link goes to my site.
Now is this a spam?. I dont think so as we see the webhost thing at the bottom of all the pages of this website.

Case2 - The other case is say if I put one advert page in this website about my services and give 2-3 diffrent page links from that site to our site then is it a spam?

Case3 - If I put links of all my clients on each others site saying that this websites where made by our company thus cross promoting each other. Then is this a spam?

creative craig

1:41 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



When ever I design something I only ever have my link on the index page, for a while I did put my link on every page and I never had any problems with Google thinkng it was spam.

Craig

jackofalltrades

1:48 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)



Given the amount of branding regular products have (made by...made in) i dont think it would be reasonable for the SEs to penalise this.

In case 3 = having links from client to client could be borderline. If its a related industry, then id imagine it would be OK.

It boils down to - is it useful for the visitor? Are links from one clients site to another really that useful for them?

In case 2 = if your client has no objections to you having a page on their site, with a few links to different pages then i dont see the problem. If its on their homepage however, there could be issues. ;)

JOAT

Marcia

1:52 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Case 3 sounds like a bit too much cross-linking to be comfortable. I wouldn't go that far, particularly if there aren't a whole lot of other links both out and in on all of the sites.

imho staying close to what would be considered a "normal" linking pattern is playing it safe, and that's not what would normally be expected.

john316

2:09 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



if you are paid for the design work, why the link?

Is web hosting relevant to the site (in your clients best interest)?

It's almost like adobe putting their logo on every document created, "This brochure created by...". I wouldn't consider it "best practice".

Marcia

3:27 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



When Campbell makes soup, every can says Campbells on it - they're the creators. Not one can ever says "made by chicken." ;)

jackofalltrades

3:29 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)



Ah, but Campbells chicken soup has Campbells chicken soup written on it! ;)

martinibuster

3:33 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Administrator 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



I agree that there's no use, except for advertising youself on a client's site, to place a link on every page. If I'm not mistaken, this isn't going to boost your pr.

Myself, I place a discreet "powered by" text link at the bottom of the index page, below the footer.

korkus2000

3:33 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



It is something that should be worked out with the client. You are getting brand exposure and the client should charge you for this. I always give my clients an option to have the link at the bottom but I give them a break in the price. I don't pressure them for it. Most do it because they want the discount. I think you should consider that your link is advertising on their site and they should be compensated in some form or fashion.

john316

3:36 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



But the campbells artwork was probably created with adobe software...maybe they should get some credit on the can.

Or maybe "this label printed by misterlabelcompany"

creative craig

3:40 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



So who's getting the raw deal the chicken or Adobe?

korkus2000

3:44 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Usually labels and other small nothing real world items like nuts and bolts have the company that made them on it. A lot of small pieces to an object all have info on them. The main reason for this is if the item breaks they can find out what it was and who it was made by to replace. Does the printer of a newspaper get credit in their mast head? Does the duplication factory get credit on a music CD? Movies have credits for everyone who touched it. Same goes with TV. I think we will see the web move to a credits page.

salmo

3:44 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



1) Having a link from each page in your clients site WILL help your pagerank, if they are prepared to allow it.
2) Case 3 would be cross linking, I speak from (hard) experience (in both the above instances).

diggle

3:45 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



I have a competitor whose company designs websites and actually hides links to his other (non-website-designing) business in all the pages of all the websites!
Consequently, he gets ranked number one in Google and other major engines.
I have informed Google about this cheat and even showed them the code but they haven't acted on it. He also has about 12 mirror sites.

john316

3:45 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



A little more discreet but probably okay:

[submitcorner.com...]

Marcia

3:47 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



It's industry wide standard procedure, so it doesn't look unusual. Plus, there's the copyright issue. It depends on the site and the arrangement, but unless copyright is specifically assigned in writing, it belongs to whoever created the work - not the maker of the tool, or the client.

If we've got "Copyright 2002 by whoever" with a link back on each page, that's legal and necessary. I just had someone try to steal credit for something a few months ago. For a fact, I found a link to a message board in the stats and followed it. Caught red-handed. There's a thread here at the board about it. My having screenshots of MY copyright on each page prevented it from happening. That type of screenshot is the best possible type of documentation - even better from the Google cache. :)

But that's another issue - for purposes of Google, I seriously doubt if they'd consider it dodgy to do what's the norm for an industry and protects people's rights.

rmjvol

3:50 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



...there's no use... to place a link on every page. If I'm not mistaken, this isn't going to boost your pr.

I disagree. Any link, internal or external, distributes the PR of that individual document. You'll usually get the most benefit out of a link from the home page as most sites have their highest PR score there. But each page has it's own PR.

You want one link from Yahoo or a link on every yahoo page?

What if one of those client site subpages has a dmoz deeplink from a PR8 cat?

rmjvol

Dante_Maure

3:57 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Or maybe "this label printed by misterlabelcompany"

This exact practice is done in many industries.

  • Bottling companies are listed on some commercial beverages.

  • Watermark logos can be found on many paper products.

  • Manufacturer info is often included on packaging materials. (in addition to the more prominent custom branding)

  • Credit is given to many book cover designers. (in addition to their standard fee)

  • Promotional brochures and flyers often include a small credit to the design company.

  • LP and CD cover artists are almost always given credit in the liner notes.

    Provided it is done with consent there is absolutely nothing unprofessional about this practice in any type of business.

  • startup

    3:58 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

    WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



    Seeing as this is the "Google News" forum, should the question be how Google looks at it.

    Case 1 [google.com]There is a inbound links filter.

    Case 2 is very similar to case one if you do it too much.

    Case 3 can be done with a small number of sites.

    If any of these sites were mine you would be paying for advertising or the link would be removed.

    [edited by: startup at 4:04 pm (utc) on Dec. 17, 2002]

    john316

    3:59 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

    WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



    There is also a copyright meta tag, a standard.

    Dante_Maure

    4:29 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

    10+ Year Member



    Case 1There is a inbound links filter.

    The filtering is sporadic at best.

    In the example search link, there are only 2 displayed backlinks from WebmasterWorld, but if you dig further, there are dozens upon dozens of indexed inbounds coming from a few of the sites.

    On top of that, an even greater number will be displayed if you go to the end of the SERPs and click the "include omitted results" link.

    Mark_A

    4:48 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

    WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



    I just say thanks when people do this.

    It is always interesting to easily know who your competitors customers are. :-)

    Marcia

    5:20 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

    WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



    Mark, people might not be able to tell who *all* of the competitor's clients are. People don't necessarily reveal all of them.

    Personally, I love to look through people's portfolios, particularly if I admire their work. But in cases where they also do SEO - that I might not get to see.

    It's still a normal practice in the industry, so I don't believe links back from all the pages would incur a penalty. GAG members would have a fit. At one time I did suspect that some were being disregarded. If that happens, the ranking could drop a bit because of some lowering of PR but it's not the same as a penalty.

    jady

    5:24 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

    10+ Year Member



    As a developer, our firm places the a tag at the bottom of every page of Client's websites. This is outlined in the contracts and is 100% the only legal way to go. This is due to the copywrite of the actual design. A client pays for custom work, which they are granted a "ROYALTY FREE" licence to use the website in any matter they wish. However, the design of the site is COPYWRITED by the designer and/or design firm.

    For legality purposes it is a must - whether or not the tag "DESGINED BY BLAH BLAH" is made into a HYPERLINK, is another story, but is still legit..

    Mark_A

    6:13 pm on Dec 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

    WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



    jady if that is the way yo do business that is fine.
    I do it another way, my clients pay me to design and develop a web site for them.

    When I have completed it and they have paid for it, it and the design becomes their copyright. If they want someone else to work on it in the future or to move servers or do whatever they like with it, (except anything that causes my repute to be damaged) I do not try to stand in their way.

    Various clients have come to me from agreements like yours and have been more than glad when I can replace the items on their web sites which their past designer claim they still own for a relatively small charge making their web site truly theirs as they usually thought it was anyhow :-)

    Marcia "People don't necessarily reveal all of them."

    Indeed your are quite right.
    I just don't see the need to reveal any of them easily. Back when selling real world products to people in a very competitive market I learnt the hard way that you shout about your customers with great care.

    I shouted about a very important new customer all over the media with the result that all of our signifcant competitors started up a dialog with them within 3 months.
    When we did have a small issue with that customer they had lots of options to switch to another supplier and did so.

    Mark
    Each to his/her own.

    austtr

    3:04 am on Dec 18, 2002 (gmt 0)

    WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



    I've followed this topic with interest.

    My case involves an existing PR5 site which we'll call SiteA.com.

    A subsequent design of SiteB.com had a linked footer on the bottom of every page acknowledging that it is "An initiative of SiteA.com" . It could just as easily have said "Website design by SiteA.com". SiteB.com had very few incoming links at that time.

    SiteB.com went from top 10 to page 26 or thereabouts in Sept. I have gone over this site so often that I'm sick of seeing it, and the only thing that seems a possibility is that somehow those links on every page from the low PR, low inbound links site to a higher PR site have triggered a links penalty.

    I've since taken off all footers except the index page and tried to boost incoming links. We'll see what happens in the next update. For me the jury is still out on the use of footer links.

    Would be good to get a definite Googleguy comment on this?

    gopi

    4:17 am on Dec 18, 2002 (gmt 0)

    WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



    If i were you i will go for case one , but only link to my site from the index page of the clients website...you may survive with links from all pages in the clients website , but its pushing the limit , and i will not be much comfortable with that :)

    And never ever crosslink between the clients websites...its toooooo dangerous. If you want to do it only for the reason of cross promotion ( not PR purpose) use Javascript links

    pageoneresults

    4:35 am on Dec 18, 2002 (gmt 0)

    WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



    I would like to think that the algo is not that easily influenced by these types of links. Unfortunately, many do not share my views. Why? Well, I see abuse by some in our industry and other industries.

    When you line up 3 or 4 keyword rich links at the bottom of a clients page, and then do that on each and every page thereafter, we all know what that is for, in most instances.

    There's is nothing wrong with signing your work and having a link to your site from each page of your clients. I seriously think Google and others have taken this into consideration and filter out the value of the duplicates. Repetitive offsite links at the bottom of every page leave a very distinct pattern. Easy to filter out.

    My feeling is that a link from the home page is fine, that's where most of the power will be anyway. If you are going to link from the bottom of every page, come up with a standard tagline and be consistent across the board. I see people getting really creative with their link text, I'd think about the near future in this scenario.

    nativenewyorker

    10:21 am on Dec 18, 2002 (gmt 0)

    10+ Year Member



    A compromise to adding links from each page of the website owner to the designer would be to put a "designed by John Doe" link on the index page and add the same as text only on the bottom of the rest of the pages without the link. That addresses the copyright issue while avoiding any pitfalls from excessive linking.

    By the way, the most widely used WYSIWYG html editor does self promotion by adding a tag within the header of every html page it generates.

    Ted

    jady

    12:14 pm on Dec 18, 2002 (gmt 0)

    10+ Year Member



    Mark_A - The way we do the business is the only "LEGAL" way to do it. Not to say that we have to put a link to our site on every single page of a Clients website - but I am agree with Marcia 101% on this because it is the only "LEGAL" way to handle copy-write issues. Going on 6 yrs in the business with over 300 projects completed in the past 3 years - come of which are corporate law firms..

    Its not the way "I DO BUSINESS" - however it is the correct way to "HANDLE COPYWRITE LEGALITIES"...

    To help everyone else out - GET an attorney to write you up agreement/contracts. Any good attorney will know how copywrite/rights works. From there, put your "signature and/or a link on the pages you create. :)

    This 36 message thread spans 2 pages: 36