And your old web designer was the one who put it there! A lot of websites have a link, usually in the footer, for the company who built the site. Have you ever considered what that link is doing there? Is it like buying a new car and having a license plate frame that says, ‘I bought this car at so and so dealership’?
This practice of minor self-promotion was common in the early days of website development and continues today despite quite a debate over its acceptability. The pro-camp (mostly web designers) say it is a simple credit for their work, it is not on ‘prime real estate’, and it helps to protect their intellectual property. The other side asks, ‘If they have been paid to create something which now belongs to the site owner; why should they get a free advertisement on every site they build?’
Now, however, this argument has become more important than a mere difference of opinion – because these links could actually hurt your site’s Google Page Rank and search engine position. You see, these days search engines use complicated algorithms to determine a site’s ‘quality’. They know that all links are not created equal and can identify what they consider ‘unnatural’ links.
Google has never offered a clear-cut guide to what is and isn’t acceptable, but recent discussions around their quality guidelines imply that these seemingly harmless developer links could be interpreted as unnatural links, which lower your website’s quality score and ranking.
At Idea180.com we have never resorted to cheap promotional tricks. We believe that quality work and good client relationships are what lead to referrals and repeat business. If your website developer put their link on your site and you don’t know how to remove it, contact us today and we will clean it off your site for free.
