Best way to put a backlink on homepage without seeing it

I have a client who has a page rank 5 and says I can put a link on his website, but does not want it to be seen on the front end like designed by (company).

I have seen people use
1. text-indent:-999999px.
2. <a href="link"></a>
3. font-size:0px;
4. color="same as background color"

Does anybody know which is the best way and if any of these have negative seo effects?

Thanks

I wouldn't advise using any hidden hyper links. 3 & 4 would be obvious to detect, we used to do that in the mid 90's.

There was a post here recently, which had anchor text linked, inside a visible div, but would only be hidden via javascript. The theory was it would be visible to bots by default, and invisible to viewers that had javascript enabled. I think that would be your best bet for now if you were trying to be shadey about it.

exactly what dinkish adviced, plus beware you could harm your customers rankings if you do the javascript cloaking and some G reviewer comes to the site and see there's a content cloaking..

How about almost invisible? Like font size 1px or color slightly off, but not completely. If the idea is that 99.99% of visitors don't see it, that could work. If it's experts seeking it out, then it's a different story, you wouldn't be able to without risks.

I'm pretty sure they don't ask interns to go through source code looking for font sizes and comparing colors, this would "very likely" be an automated task. You shouldn't be concerned about a manual penalty by someone stumbling upon it, you should be concerned about your client getting penalized (and extremely likely) the site you linked to.

Another common way was to use a transparent or a 1x1 image. It wasn't anchored with a keyword, but it was still a backlink.

Besides, like I said, that stuff worked 18 years ago. Do you really Google wouldn't have caught on and enforced that from happening?

Dude below is the easiest way.


But this is cheating. BlackHatCheating LOL

Op, thats the super easy way to get banned or de-indexed quickly....

Edit: Actually in this case, try a link that wraps around a small image.

Hi OP, in my humble opinion I'd tell your client the only way to have a safe link from his site to yours is with a genuine link. Trying to hide it in the ways you mention in your original post could have negative effects on both of your sites, as mentioned they worked a few years ago but are frowned upon now. I'd say you have three 100% safe options really.

1). Make the link be it anchor text or url and blend it in to the bottom of the page beside or in between other small text so it doesn't stand out, in the footer text perhaps.

2). Go for the 'Website designed by yoursite.com', I understand this isn't what he wants but this type of link is overlooked or ignored by 99% of visitors that are only interested in what the page is about, this type of link is obviously also the best for possible future work for you and I would say the safest too for both of you. If there was ever a safe combination of text or anchor text or combination of the 2 it would be 'Website designed by http://www.yoursite.com'.

3). Create an image or use an existing logo / banner and link that to your site. It can be as small as you can get away with without looking like its so small its only purpose is for a link ( so not just a pixel lol ).

These are what I would consider to be safe, white hat methods and as far as I'm aware totally untouchable in the penalty rat race. All the best whatever method you choose.

Thank you guys for the input. I chose to just go with a small image with my logo in it at the bottom left hand corner of his website. Question are image backlinks still good quality backlink with juice power?

Also another question my buddy runs a company that is going around updating peoples websites from old plugins and updates.(He has a spider that lets him know they have outdated stuff)

Anyways he has been placing an image not as a link, but a link under it.

<img src="#" >


<a href="#" style="bottom: 0px; position: absolute; z-index: -1;">Link</a>

Do you think this is a bad way to get a link or is this acceptable?

Google can and will detect this extremely easily. You'll probably end up getting you and your client penalized.

All you're buddy is doing is hiding a div with a link in it. He doesn't even need an image over top of it if the div appearing in front had a background or color designated.

None of these proposals are going to be beneficial.

image link that matches the color fo the background and is very small

pagerank will still be passed on and you wont harm your clients website

Put in a div and layer it behind everything else with css.

Put a hidden div. That's it.

You could follow any of the methods allow but it would still be visible in the source and Google can detect such stuff easily, hence be prepared since you could get penalized for that.