Question Linking From Client Websites - Follow/No Follow

[ElleZombie]

Aloha!

I work for a website agency and we link from the websites we've built back to our agency website. SEO is one of my weaker areas (although I know what I'm doing 90% of the time). However, in this case, I don't want to follow a course of action without getting some advice!

As a lot of our clients are small businesses (outdated sites, no links, never updated etc). SEMRush shows them as toxic backlinks and tells me we have a high toxicity level. My question is, do I remove the links completely (as SEMRush suggests) or do I change them to No Follow and leave it at that? There are about 160 of these sites, so it's important I get it right. We also get a lot of referrals through from them, so I'm reluctant to just take them off altogether.

Thanks in advance,
Elle

 

[theteamplayer]

elle, if your website agency isn't worried about delivering a below par service to it's 160 clients - outdated sites, no links, never updated, high toxicity level, reluctant to improve them, walk away.

this is an old tactic that works no more. keep links out from client sites related to their website, not to promote your website,

you have an opportunity to upgrade 160 websites to mobile web capability. if you know html, google amp is a doodle. just html and css. google takes care of the javascript and actively promotes your content giving it preferred placement in google search.

elle, be better, do better. code is poetry

 

[ElleZombie]

Thanks. Unfortunately, like any business, we can't work for free. If people don't have the money to upgrade their website or pay for ongoing services, there's very little we can do to improve their website. The sites I'm talking about are simply hosted by us, run by very small businesses and individuals, and the links are historic. Nothing we do is below par.

Be careful you don't fall off your high horse.

 

[Community]

SEMRush see's them as toxic because they are sitewide and unrelated. That said, regardless of what many say, having a creditation link in the footer for client sites still holds value.

Providing they are not keyword rich and are branded anchors they can give you a much needed diverisification to saturate money phrases, not only that they still provide value in terms of converting customers who may like what you've done on someones site and will contact you to do similar.

Obviously the above will heavily depend on your overall strategy and whether it complements it, its not going to be the case for every Web design business as it will depend on a large range of factors to do with both your backlink profile, your authority and the clients.

Think outside the box, instead of linking in the footer of every site. Ask the client if you could write a unique page on their site "Website made by" with a unique bit of content.

Then in the footer of these sites link to the page you've just created in the same way so it has global coverage.

Obviously this will involve some leg work creating a respectable bit of content or case study for each site. But it will benefit you much more than throwing some sitewide links in a footer.

Other options are to limit credit links to homepage only ( while still retaining branded only anchors ).

There are so many possibilites to turn it into a viable advertisement and brand mention. Remember tools like SEM rush is a guide based on whats safest. SEO being a weaker area of knowledge for you is mainly because you lack experience of experimenting and assessing data of what actually works and getting a strategy together as a result.

 

[ElleZombie]

Thanks, that's really helpful. I definitely want to keep a branded link on the newer sites we've done. The historic sites aren't great advertising and we don't get many referrals - so I'm not too bothered about removing the links on those.