: Backlinks: How does a company's name as the anchor text help with SEO? Often I see footer links like: SEO by COMPANY NAME How does this help with SEO other than helping a company rank for

@Martha676

For starter this practice looks very bad to the user. The user needs to come first in this situation. And I will note, my website outranks a lot of larger companies that have thousands of those particular links. My website has none.


It makes the development company look spammy
It makes the website that has been developed look spammy


SEO Implications


Sitewide links (external) in the footer are devalued at best or penalized if off topic.


Here is Matt Cutt's discussing it.

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@Debbie626

Footer links are discounted by Google. I doubt this type of link in a broad keyword as SEO would be of much value. It may be good for some direct traffic but not much else. Often these are on websites with little trust and little value in link juice.

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@Kevin317

Yes. The proximity of text near a hyperlink is almost certainly a factor in search engine rankings.

Your example is still good to do even without keyword proximity because it helps to ensure they rank well for their company name. This is never a given and very important when your name is similar to another company or web pages with bad press about your company outrank you for your company name.

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