Is it negative to put a backlink in the footer of client websites?

Publishing help SEO
1

Hi there,

When I build websites, I put a link in the footer that says, “Website designed by RohanGanachari”.

And on the portfolio section of my website, I link back to client’s website (this way, visitors to my website can see the live website that I designed).

However, does Google penalise me, my client or both for doing this?

Thank you.

2

No, and that’s quite the opposite: this is the best, most natural and healthiest way to bring SEO juice to your site and your client’s. This is the honest way to grow your SEO: you tell people who made the website, and you direct people to it from your site. This is how Googles SEO works: counting the links back to a site and determining if those links are made in an honest way.

It’s not negative, it’s the best practice.

3

That’s a relief! :slight_smile:

I read a post in another group - about Google penalising websites of designers who have back-links from client websites and pointed at following Google guidelines: Spam Policies for Google Web Search | Google Search Central  |  Documentation  |  Google for Developers

  • Excessive link exchanges (“Link to me and I’ll link to you”) or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking
  • Requiring a link as part of a Terms of Service, contract, or similar arrangement without allowing a third-party content owner the choice of using nofollow or other method of blocking PageRank, should they wish.

^ How would Google know if the website owner has or has not given consent for a back-link?

4

This is not the case, you have a purpose and Google can clearly understand it.

And a designer portoflio doesn’t fall under the second example either.

I have yet to know about a real world designer portfolio site suffering from backlinking their reference websites.

1 Like
5

Thank you for explaining. :slight_smile:

6

I just found out that a back-link with a NoFollow attribute is the appropriate way to go because SEO is about relevance.

If I designed a site for a plumber and we linked-back to each other without a NoFollow attribute, then both of us could be penalised by Google for doing so. That’s because neither of our businesses have any relevance to each other. This issue becomes more prominent as you get more & more clients from different industries.

Excessive link exchanges (“Link to me and I’ll link to you”)