I hope this is the correct place for this question:

What are the Pros/Cons of adding a link to your design business website on a website you design (with client's permission)? example: "design by xxxx.com"

I have heard the Pros:

- increases visibility for your buisiness
- improves search engine placement of your business site (more inbound links)

I have heard the Con:

- other businesses can approach your clients to "steal" them, once they know who their competition is

I would appreciate feedback on the above.

Thanks!
Jim

I hope this is the correct place for this question:

- other businesses can approach your clients to "steal" them, once they know who their competition is

Thanks!
Jim

Other business can approach your client to steal them even if your name isn't on the bottom of the page. The only difference is with your tag down there they would know who's client they are stealing.

I don't see any downsides to this, unless you design poor looking websites.

-Billy

Other business can approach your client to steal them even if your name isn't on the bottom of the page. The only difference is with your tag down there they would know who's client they are stealing.

I don't see any downsides to this, unless you design poor looking websites.

-Billy

And if you did you should get customers anyway.

I wouldn't purchase a design that has a link back to the designer, but thats me.

I have a checkbox in my contract for clients to check is they will allow me to place a link and designed by credit at the bottom of the site.

The line of the contract also states that for any reason either party can remove that line.

So far not one of my clients has asked me to remove it....I do nice sites and they are proud of them.

-Billy

I have a checkbox in my contract for clients to check is they will allow me to place a link and designed by credit at the bottom of the site.


Back when I did design I had a similar term in the contract and it cost the client extra to remove it. From a business point of view, clients with the link are providing exposure for you so it makes sense to cut some money off the price. The option is always there incase someone did want to remove it though.

I personally can't think of any downside from having the link on the client's site.

I have heard the Con:

- other businesses can approach your clients to "steal" them, once they know who their competition is


If they're looking at a finished site with your link on it, you're most likely done with that client anyways. There's not much to "steal". Seems unlikely for the client to pay another designer when it's obvious they've already paid to have their current one designed.

Back when I did design I had a similar term in the contract and it cost the client extra to remove it. From a business point of view, clients with the link are providing exposure for you so it makes sense to cut some money off the price. The option is always there incase someone did want to remove it though.

I personally can't think of any downside from having the link on the client's site.

Thats a pretty neat idea, I think I may now have to implement something similar to this in the near future.

Back when I did design I had a similar term in the contract and it cost the client extra to remove it. From a business point of view, clients with the link are providing exposure for you so it makes sense to cut some money off the price. The option is always there incase someone did want to remove it though.

I personally can't think of any downside from having the link on the client's site.

Curious, what type of discount would you give if the link was displayed and what type of price would you charge in addition if the link was removed?

We gave our design firm permission to display their link at the bottom of our site simply because they did an outstanding job.

We even hired them again to redesign our new site and will try to give them additional exposure because of the amount of work and dedication they are putting into the project.

I guess if we weren't happy with the results we are given it would be another story.


Jimbob - does that answer your question from a "client" side?

Curious, what type of discount would you give if the link was displayed and what type of price would you charge in addition if the link was removed?

There wasn't a set price, it all depended on the project. If you expect to get a lot of exposure from a specific project, it makes more sense to give a higher discount if they leave the link. For a standard Mom and Pop site, the discount would normally be in the 5-10% range.

You just have to be careful how you word the quote. You don't want to lay it out as a premium to remove the link, you want to make it out as a discount for leaving it in place.

I wouldn't purchase a design that has a link back to the designer, but thats me.

Do you buy "name-brand" computers, cell phones, sneakers, cars, televisions, etc.? I'm not trying to be "smart", but other industries do it all the time....

I just do a small "Site Designed by xxxxxxxx" with a hyperlink on the Index page of the site in font size -2. I think it's ridiculous when designers have it on the bottom of every page of the site (that's overkill).

So far no one has complained or asked for it to be removed.

If anything it might help your Google rankings: http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=745
Make sure that other sites link to yours. Links help our crawlers find your site and can give your site greater visibility in our search results. When returning results for a search, Google combines PageRank (our measure of a page's importance) with sophisticated text-matching techniques to display pages that are both important and relevant to each search. Google counts the number of votes a page receives to determine its PageRank, interpreting a link from page A to page B as a vote by page A for page B. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Please note that ranking of sites in our search results is completely automated, and we don't manually assign keywords to sites.

I ask my clients to have my link in the bottom and they have nothing against it, not to mention that I will put the site in my portfolio (another thing we talk about previously) and they'll get a link in exchange :)

Hand't any client refuse this so far.

It varies for me, some clients actually encourage me to do it! As a rule of thumb if I'm happy with the site and it's some of my better work I'll lean towards putting one on.

If it's a site where the client can edit content I tend to steer clear because some of them, the moment they get a WYSIWG, start using flashing gifs and buggering up your nicely formatted CSS styled text!

At one time (when I was freelancing on my own), I put a link at the bottom of an entire site, always with permission from the customer.

After the partnership formed, we realized three things:

Larger customers see this as unprofessional.
Our name was being associated too strongly with the customers' content.
We were missing a great opportunity for quality backlinks with minimal customer intrusion...


...and so here's what we started doing. Instead of placing a link on every page of a site, we create an "About This Site" or "Site Credits" page. This is a single page devoted to information regarding how the site was constructed and the people who were a part of its construction. It lists any companies involved, not just us, and the page is always both keyword-rich and informative for the users (typically discussing accessibility considerations).

Creating a page like this gives you the following benefits:

Site credits as a topic is more professional than giving footer credit as an afterthought.
You can create content that actually has some meaning to the end user, something informative and valuable.
Your name gets associated with content that matches your function.
Customers invariably perceive this as being less intrusive and self-serving.


Here's a quick example of the text used on one of these Site Credits pages, just to give you some idea (I've made it generic):
<h1>Web site design and development services provided by [COMPANY NAME], [COMPANY LOCATION(S)].</h1> (note the use of heading tags, relevent keywords and location as search engine points of interest)

<p>The [DOMAIN NAME] Web site was constructed in strict accordance with W3C WCAG and XHTML/CSS validation guidelines in order to make it as usable and widely accessible as possible. Visitors using any browsing configuration are welcome to peruse this site. This includes visitors with enlarged or reduced default font size settings, text browsers, screen readers, any Web browser released within the last five years, PDAs, cell phones, tablet PCs and other alternative browsing devices. This site honors user-specified style sheets, and is optimized to load in a timely manner on dialup connections as well as broadband.</p>

<h2>Browse this site and the rest of the Internet more quickly and safely:</h2>

<p>If you have not already done so, we recommend upgrading to one of the following free browsers to get the most complete [DOMAIN NAME] experience:</p>
<ul>
<li>[LINK TO BROWSER]</li>
<li>[LINK TO BROWSER]</li>
<li>[LINK TO BROWSER]</li>
<li>[LINK TO BROWSER]</li>
</ul>

(in case you're wondering, our browser list varies, but generally includes Opera, Firefox, K-Meleon and sometimes Mozilla - no customer has ever taken issue with this)

[LINK TO XHTML VALIDATOR]
[LINK TO CSS VALIDATOR]If you're considering doing something like this, feel free to use this little blurb as a base, but please come up with something original.

HTH :)

Chevy and ford put their logos on the trucks and cars they build, so what is the difference - none. You built the website, put your logo on it. Consider yourself an artist and sign your work.

If i have made a website that im proud of (pretty much every website i finish im proud of) then i want to put my name on, this brings me some more clients in and spreads my name out a little bit more. I have had no complaints from any of the companies i have made the websites for about the link, and no requests so far to have it removed! :)

its tacky to ask, unless you offer them a discount or they request one. If you paid someone to build your house would you want their ad on the side of it? I think not.