On Sun, 07 Nov 2004 05:17:18 GMT, SEO Dave

Say I design a site for someone and I state upfront that in exhange
for my services I will place a link on the site's pages I worked on
[no discount]. I look at the footer of some sites I come across that I
like the layout/design of - to see who did the work. I sort of expect
to see it if the site owner had someone else do the site design for
them. Part of the deal as far as I am concerned - just like the phone
number listed on a billboard of the company to contact if you too want
to advertise on a billboard.

So if I put my link there - it is there _not_ for the oh-so-precious
PR but to let others, visiting that site, who did the site design and
maybe consider contacting me for the same services.

No, I won't go into the following:

Why? Because it sounds way overly-dramatic.

If it is ok to share or sell link space to unrelated site, then it is
ok to share links to an unrelated site. 'Nuff said. Doesn't matter if
that unrelated site is an SEO company or nursery rhyme site - it's a
link and likely one that the person, who owns the site, can _see_ is
there on the page since it is visible in the footer.

Greatly reduce the overall PR of a site? Please. I seriously doubt
_one_ link, with an anchor text of 4 to 5 words maybe, even site wide
will "greatly reduce the overall PR of a site". I am looking at my own
sites, where I share an unrelated footer link site wide, and I don't
se how or where it held me back any by sharing it there.

If it was 10 links or 20 or so, and less than 5% reciprocated, then I
would see how the "PR Drain" argument could be applied ... but _one_,
to someone who helped them with their site [design, seo, whatever], is
going to just suck the PR right out of that site? Doubt it.

Particularly since I didn't see ONE post sharing that thought when
someone, last week, posted a request for wanting to pay for site-wide
links from PR4 or above sites. Not one person - not even you - posted
about sites that would carry would site-side link would suffer a PR
drain and not do as well in search engines due to the link being
'unrelated'. Instead I bet the person had some people contacting him
saying "sure, you can share your link[s] on my site - how much will
you pay me?" Times in the past I have mentioned about themed links
[related to content] I seem to recall there were a some folks happy to
chime in a thought about "a link is a link - themed or not" or that
there wasn't any felt proof that Google or Yahoo cared about themed
links.

Granted on Google - and only on Google - I may get some PR flow as a
result; depends though on how many links the person has on that page
on if I will benefit just a little bit. Whereas a link from my site,
from a page with links to folks' sites I worked on, may not have a lot
of links shared on it ... so I will flow some of that PR right back to
them. So shucks - if unrelated site links harms sites - then I would
be harming myself more by sharing all them unrelated links to sites I
worked on, huh?

And yes, I will get some backlinks as a rsult of that footer link. But
I would get some backlinks if I paid Joe Blow to have my link listed
site-wide. Only with the former, I had to work and satisfy the person
with my work before I got to share that link. Otherwise it wouldn't be
there. So in a way - I had to work on _earning_ that link.

Sorry, but if the OP had not mentioned about the footer link being to
an SEO company - I doubt anyone would found fault with it. I find it
humorous that _just because_ it is an SEO firm's link,and one that
worked on the site, that all of the sudden it is a wholly different
story and draining the sites of PR and not having them do as well in
search engines.

*yes, still devil's advocating here. But likely my last devilish post*

Carol
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2004 by Carol; All Rights Reserved.