Web Designers

If you allow your web design company to put a link back to their website on the bottom of yours, you are paying them TWICE.   Even worse, it’s recurring billing.

Because Google’s pagerank algorithm uses incoming links to a website to determine it’s importance, there is an entire industry that has developed around buying and selling links.  Links can help a design firm rank for search terms that then bring them more business or revenue.  When you let your web designer put a link at the bottom of the website YOU paid for, you are paying them in link equity.   The value of this link on the open market can vary from a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars a month!

Are you a well known retailer?   A very active person in your community?  That link at the bottom may actually be worth what you paid for your website EVERY YEAR.   The problem is that web design companies often take advantage of your ignorance or add it to the bottom of your page.

Sometimes this is acceptable.  For example, if your web design company links to you from their site, you are benefiting from their link popularity and it may be an even swap.  Other times people get free services that link back to the creator.  If you use a free blog template, for example, it is fair and equitable to give the designer credit.   The bottom of this blog links to WordPress.org for this reason — they gave me free blog software, and I return the favor with a link.

Buyer beware.  If you are paying for a service, you shouldn’t have to link back to the person who created it unless it was fully disclosed as part of the deal.

This post originated at the Online Marketer blog, home to marketing consultant John Coronella.