Agencies: Quit Wasting Your Clients’ Footer Powered By Links

Agencies and designers are typically diligent at adding their powered by to the footer of the sites and applications they build. Still, I’m surprised at how many don’t utilize that opportunity to gain some search engine ranking. When I explain search engine optimization and ranking to folks, I typically explain it this way:
- On-page Keyword Optimization – using keywords effectively on your page will provide a clear message to search engines on the terms you want your page associated with. I encourage people to write compelling content for people but never to ignore the opportunity to use keywords.
- Off-page Search Engine Optimization – when a link to your site is found on relevant, powerful sites with the same keyword, your page will skyrocket in rank. The better the sites and the more links you have, the better your rank.
That’s not all that matters… recency and frequency of changes to the relevant content also matter. However, the two methods above are the minimum you should be incorporating. Since you probably don’t have pages all over the web to publish links on, you should take advantage of the forums, social networks, and client sites you have!
If your client is already allowing a powered-by link, there are two methods you can deploy. If they will allow an extended link, this is ideal:
Powered by DK New Media, a <a href="https://martech.zone/partner/dknewmedia/">New Media Agency</a>
If you need to be a bit more discreet, utilize a title tag:
Powered by <a href="https://martech.zone/partner/dknewmedia/" title="New Media Agency">DK New Media</a>
If you’re allowed to provide a small logo or image with a link, take advantage of the alternative text within your anchor tag and name your image in accordance with the keywords:
<a href="https://martech.zone/partner/dknewmedia/" title="New Media Agency"><img src="https://dknewmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/dknewmedia-logo.png" alt="New Media Agency" /></a>
The examples above are real. DK New Media is now ranking in the top 5 on Google, Bing, and Yahoo! for new media agency, which gets 1,000 monthly search queries. Some of this is because of the on-page optimization we’ve done, but much of it is the off-site anchor tags we’ve created.