Web design portfolio pages

Would this cause a problem in Google

[march83]

I have a portfolio page on a web design site that links to a few of the sites I have designed. These also have a link back to the design site (ie designed by bla bla bla). In the eyes of Google is this two completely unrelated site linking to each other? The design site and the sites on the portfolio page have all been hit badly by Google's latest mini-"update".

Surely here I have a valid reason for linking un-related sites?

[seofreak]

That's certainly not the case because there are other web designers and their clients whose websites are doing just fine even if they are interlinked.

You have to look into it more to see why you have been hit badly. Have you had a PR drop or used any wrong techniques to get high?

[jady]

SeoFreak said is perfectly. We have been doing it for years and showcase up to 50 clients at a time. And all of our clients sites are linked back to us. Though Google doesnt give must weight to these links and surely doesnt count them all as backlinks - by far we have never seen any type of penalty for this practice - it's our industry!

Can you imagine trying to pick a web designer or web design firm without viewing any portfolios? The portfolio is the #1 sales tool and on our site, which brings approximately 2,500 unique visitors from Google each month, the portfolio is the #2 viewed page. (#1 is the index obviously)

Good luck!

[t2dman]

Google is dropping sites! Old news. And very hard to know why.

Therefore I have been dropping all possible things that Google might take exception to - now putting clients on a different server, only one way links to clients (they need the PR), and text mention of parent site, not link from clients, non recip links from each page to authority sites for that page.

Have yet to get the sites back properly, but you keep trying. Once they are back, I will probably add proper links from them back to parent.

All the normal onpage seo, hopefully not excessively done.

I know it is overkill, but somewhere is the key.

I have seen one of my parent pages with same title keywords as client, kill the clients page when on same server... Interesting, my PR6 site virtually untouched through all Google convulsions. Two or three pages effected in each generally come back in the next Google update.

[BallochBD]

jaydy
<by far we have never seen any type of penalty for this practice - it's our industry!>

Absolutely, and if Google failed to see this then we (and they) are doomed. I would relax on this one. There is no way that they would punish websites for linking to their client's sites. This is a practice that has been going on since day one. I mean doesn't Google link to all their clients sites via Adwords? Same thing really.

[martinibuster]

You're ok as long as all of your client websites have unique inbounds from different web pages and so do you. Do a site search for "cross linking penalty."

Crosslinking penalties used to be reported here often a couple years ago but you don't hear much about them nowadays.