Promotional Links or Spam?

Interesting, never thought of it like that

@Chris – You could hardly call them editorial, the developer has placed them there – often coded so they cannot be removed via the CMS, they are not given by the owner in editorial context.
Most web developers also have a portfolio page linking out to their clients’ sites. So, most of these links can also be considered reciprocal – meaning they should pass even less value. Combined with the fact that footer links are already devalued, there shouldn’t be much juice passing through these.
A worrying trend I have noticed lately is developers placing more than one text link in the footer, for example ‘Web Development Sydney’, ‘Web Design Sydney’ – which is an obvious (spammy?) attempt to manipulate rankings, albeit a misguided one as both links often link to the same page (the text in the first link will only be considered).
/end rant

IMO if I was Google I would prefer the sites to nofollow these links as they are not editorial, shouldn’t be counted as a “vote”, and may or may not be intended to “manipulate” PageRank.
Having said that I don’t think anyone is going to get penalised since this is such a common practice, so as Sonny said above you can safely get away with it.

Thanks a lot for your superb post.

You could argue that these footer links are editorial in the sense that they are an endorsement of the services that such companies provide and therefore are justifiable in the eyes of Google (though they may be overweight given they are sitewide).
Though with that said I know with every web site I have paid for to be designed I have always requested that such links be removed given that I’m paying for the service (as well as the strategic element – mentioned below).
I imagine that going forward as more companies become savvy to SEO they may be more inclined make a similar request, or request that the link be nofollowed (though this may not benefit either party then).
I think also moving forward companies will become more protective of their SEO or web design “suppliers” and won’t be as willing to openly display who they work with which would open the door for head hunting. So there may be a strategic element moving forward as well. I know I protect my web design “supplier” these days just because good ones are just so hard to find.
I think at the end of the day Google would probably be better off modifying their algo (if they haven’t already) to reflect that links in footers not truly valuable sitewide links whereas a link in a blogroll for example might be a much more editorial supportive link yet still sitewide…?

Hi Grant,

I would definately recommend to any web design company that they tag their clients sites if they can get away with it.

You may not necessarily get much value from the links in the footer but its better than no link at all. The sitewide link demonstrates a deep level association between the two sites, helping to improve domain authority of the linked site.

Yes this strategy is very 2005, however the results achieved by the companies that rank highly for ‘web design’ speak for themself.

Another point to note would be that the search engines will never penalise you for doing this, they will only discount the value of the link, so at the end of the day, you’re going to rank above the guy next door who isnt doing this.

My point goes to footer link idea

IMO a better method which has less of a chance of a penalty is to link the footer links to a single page on the client’s site which then links off to the web developers site. Better for the client and better quality links for the web developer.

Hi Allison, thanks for your comment. I wouldn’t call having one link on a clients site as spam at all. In fact that’s how I believe it should be done.

Interesting debate Grant. I’m a web designer and whilst I do include links on clients sites to showcase my work I only place one link on the homepage. This could not be spam could it?
Allison