January 15, 201412 yr Good question. I don't see how it could hurt. Some of the bigger companies have enough exposure that they need not do it. I'm not an authority in terms of the SEO side of things so it might be worth someone with the knowledge interjecting.
January 15, 201412 yr Your question is rather vague. When you say 'is it worth it?', in what respect are you asking? For SEO? For future reference? For advertising?
January 16, 201412 yr Author For promotion really. Does it make you seem like a small outfit? As 4lias says above, the bigger companies don't do it.
January 17, 201412 yr In terms of SEO it will make no real difference unless the site happened to be within the Web Design niche. In terms of promotion, the bigger companies do actually do it. Not on their high profile customers because 90% of the time its in the contract that your not allowed to leave any mention of yourself in the code, which means no link back. In terms of promotion I don't actually know if it makes much difference. All my work is word of mouth or I am found through SEO. Edited January 17, 201412 yr by Nathan
January 17, 201412 yr Getting your name out there is never a bad idea. You want people to see the site, think "I want a site just like this" - and there you are, listed as the designer. Anytime you have the chance to promote yourself, you should be sure to take advantage. I really don't think it would make your company look small at all, just proud of the work you do. If the big companies don't put their name at the bottom, its because they are being paid to leave it off. Or they are spending thousands on advertising and it doesn't really matter either way.
January 17, 201412 yr We include a credit that we built a client's site in the footer (where possible). Some clients kick up a fuss, but most people are happy for you to include it if it's subtle. I'd say it's definitely worth it. We get an OK amount of traffic to our company site from client sites we've built. And surely if someone browsing that particular website is in the market for a new website themselves, and they're impressed by the design etc, then saying "hey, we did this btw" is a good thing
January 18, 201412 yr In terms of SEO it will make no real difference unless the site happened to be within the Web Design niche. In terms of promotion, the bigger companies do actually do it. Not on their high profile customers because 90% of the time its in the contract that your not allowed to leave any mention of yourself in the code, which means no link back. In terms of promotion I don't actually know if it makes much difference. All my work is word of mouth or I am found through SEO. The reason web design niches are incredibly difficult to rank in (for anything half decent) are because they have 100's of unique domains with links pointing back to them. You're right in that a link on a web design site is going to better. So if you can't rank a website despite having access to 100's of websites where you can change the anchor text in a matter of minutes, you're doing something wrong! Look at the guys ranking for ecommerce web design. The reason for that is because they switched over a number of anchors to say "ecommerce web design" and look where they rank....
January 19, 201412 yr The reason web design niches are incredibly difficult to rank in (for anything half decent) are because they have 100's of unique domains with links pointing back to them. You're right in that a link on a web design site is going to better. So if you can't rank a website despite having access to 100's of websites where you can change the anchor text in a matter of minutes, you're doing something wrong! Look at the guys ranking for ecommerce web design. The reason for that is because they switched over a number of anchors to say "ecommerce web design" and look where they rank.... And it is a very good idea to have those backlinks with that sort of text in. I know because one of my regional sponsors used the name of their company and their was only a slight improvement. Then they asked me to switch it to Web Design Bournemouth and soon after it jumped up from about 50th to 11th. However at the same time I hear it good to have that variation as Google will spot you as someone who is cheating the system if there are too many of the same anchor text. I would personally say that backlinks from unrelated websites will have a massive difference, but I know other people have different opinions on that. However I would also say that word of mouth is the biggest form of getting new work, so a link at the bottom of a clients site may just help! Edited January 19, 201412 yr by neil0wen
January 19, 201412 yr Oh god yeah, definitely don't have anchor rich backlink profile! You need to have a huge mix of anchors; money keywords, compound, generic, naked anchors and images.
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