How do you feel about having your web designer or developer's link on your site ?

The Benefits to the Web Designer / Developer

Ask yourself, is one of the purposes of your website to promote a web developer, their products and services or your own ?

You may not realise it, but by allowing a designer or developer's link to appear in your footer, you are giving them massive free publicity.

Firstly, there is their Link Popularity, which helps boost the performance of their site with search engines like Google.  Then there is Page Rank, which gives them even better results for strategically targetted keywords.

Then if someone likes your website design, they might click on the link to find out who built it and enquire about getting one designed themselves.

For the cost of a small link, this is gold for any web designer, and most will completely take it for granted as an established convention.  Some will even be selective, choosing to only link from the sites they are proud of, like artist's signature on the back their masterpieces.  To me this is arrogant.

The Benefits for You

So what are the benefits of having a link to your web developer's website or product sites on your website ?

Let me think .... 

Maybe your staff might want to contact the web developer for support.  Perhaps the original project managers have moved on and you have no idea who built your site.  That would be pretty disorganised, but it does happen - many businesses see their website project as a distraction and don't treat it like they do their core business.

Maybe the site was built pro-bono or for free, in which case, promiting the designer or developer is a way of remunerating them.  Datalink occasionally does jobs like this.

Maybe the site was built at a discount, and this is a way of the designer or developer recovering some of their costs.

The Negatives

Now let's consider the minuses for you

I am suprised by the number of these links which are dead (perhaps their designer's business closed ?) or go to "under construction" sites.  If the link is in your footer, you will effectively have a broken link on every page of your website.  When this happens, it reflects really badly on your website and makes it look aged. 

Also if your web developer has or develops a bad reputation in the industry, then by association, it can effect your business reputation.  For example, if you are responsible to shareholders and your web designer is expensive, your shareholders might begin to question your decision making.  Similarly if you are non-profit, then you might be criticised for being overly lavish with your website.

I've even seen web designers and developers logos and banners on some sites, which can really detract from the site, making it look busy.  It is just not good practice.

Many neglect to consider the security risk if the link is to a software program or contains the name of such a program, like a website content management systems (CMS), then it can unnecessarily expose the underlying technologies and their vulnerabilities to potential hackers (particularly with popular high install open source systems).

It can even effect your own site's page rank and search engine performance, because it is effectively a link to a non-related website on each and every page.

So what are the alternatives ?

You may be suprised to find that web developers can use a variety of different methods to credit your web designer or developer without effecting your brand.

Firstly, you could consider creating a "Credits", "Site Credits" or "Website Credits" link in your footer which goes to a single page with information on who built the site.  This is specific, but could also include other contributors, such as your own staff who may also have put in their time, effort and knowledge in the initial construction and ongoing management.  An "About This Site" is a more general option, which can provide additional information about the site for users of which the site credits could be a small part.

The second option is to not put this information in the site content at all.  Web designers and developers will often hide their credits in the metadata (metatags) or using HTML comments, so that they are not visible to users of the website, but are to other web developers who view the HTML source and search engines like Google.  While this could be seen as cheeky, it is discreet and a good consolation for their hard work.

We apply these techniques after first consulting our customers, choosing the correct option for each circumstance.  That ensures that our hard work is recognised and that they get a good result with their website without having to overtly advertise our products and services.  Most are happy for our link to go there, and that is why it is on so many sites.  They know that we aren't a "fly by night" web designer and in for the long run as their web development partners.  For the big corporations, we would never dare to try to put our link on there, and I would insist that you tell your web developer not to.

Afterall, word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing.  As a web designer, our philosophy is that if you do a good job and don't get carried away with the kudos, you will be rewarded with referalls from your business partners.

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