Web designers are like artists who come up with a beautiful page and love to leave their signature at the bottom of their work. Your signature is usually a backlink to your company page, usually in the footer. They use ‘company name’ as the anchor text, which won’t give them the full potential of that backlink. Instead of using a Local SEO anchor text, they will use your company name as “Company Name”. The point is who searches for “Company Name”? Those who search for the company name search for it specifically because they have already heard of the company. Searchers on any search engine will search for KEYWORDS, not a company name, unless they are looking for more information about the company.
It is very important to place a link in the footer of the page. The reason is that the footer appears on every page of the website. This helps generate more juice from that link. A spiderbot may not find the page your link is on, but if it’s in the footer, it will appear on every page of the website. If Google likes one page more than another, it won’t matter as your link will always appear at the bottom. Any new page or post that is created on that domain will remind spiderbots of your footer link.
Another problem I see is that webmasters don’t use the bold tag in their backlinks. Imagine a spiderbot checking out this new page you developed for your client. The entire page uses normal text, but at the bottom of the page is something that SCREAMS FOR ATTENTION! He says “Look at me, I’m different from the rest because I have a bold label!” The bold tag shows emphasis, so using an anchor text with the bold tag tells spiderbot that the link is very important.
Imagine looking for references for a company you are about to hire. Would it matter if the business reference is the brother of the owner or a close friend of the owner? I’m sure you’re going to want ‘more referrals’ from other places unless you’re very familiar with the owner’s brother or close friend of his. I would see this as an affiliation rather than a referral.
abc.com IP 123 points to xyz.com IP 123 (looks like the same person) Client is nobody so probably affiliation
Google IP 123 points to YouTube IP 123 (same person but main website involved) Huge affiliation pointing to another huge affiliation
abc.com IP 789 points to xyz.com IP 123 (different IP address, not the same person) This is more of a referral link than an affiliate link.
Links will now be referrals instead of affiliations.
Summary
1. Use keywords for your anchor text, not the company name
2. Place link in the footer
3. Use bold tags with anchor text
4. Receive referral links instead of affiliate links