Should You Add Your Agency to Your Website's Footer? The Honest SEO Answer

Walk through the footer of almost any small business website and you'll see it: "Website by [Agency Name]" with a link back to whoever built the site. It's been standard practice for two decades, and somewhere along the way both sides started quietly believing it was helping the client's SEO too. Here's the uncomfortable truth: in most cases, a dofollow footer link pointing from your site to your agency doesn't help your SEO at all. It helps the agency's — and depending on how it's implemented, it can actively hurt yours. Here's the honest breakdown.