Linking to your web developer, BAD or GOOD?

From reading Googles webmaster guidlines allowing a link from your website to your developers is bad,

i quote Google 'You should never have to link to an SEO':

this page can be found here at google support

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35291&topic=8524


Any thoughts please???????? - could this be a reason to receive a penalty?

 

Don't just read the title, read the whole thing:

You should never have to link to an SEO.
Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of "free-for-all" links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that don't affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines -- at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.

"You should never have to" and "You must not link to SEO, or we will slap you" are 2 different things

 

so linking to them will NEVER harm your site?

 

Of course it won't hurt you. But my advice is to link only on homepage. This will be better for you and also for them.

 

Well, linking to bad neighborhood sites will harm you, for example if you link to domains that are banned from Google, etc.

 

I think what Google is implying is, if the SEO is good there should be no reason they would need a link from you. You're paying the SEO to promote you, not the other way around.

 

Exactly what I was trying to say, just didn't find the right words for it

 

You wouldn't want to link to anybody unless your content & there's is relevant to each other, plus beneficial for the visitor.

If you have a web site about cows, linking to a car forum will never help you but if you link to a cow bell site, it's relevant to each other, plus beneficial for the visitor.

You want to link to sites similar to yours & you want other web sites similar to yours to link to your web site because of your content.

 

It doesn't matter as long as your linked site content is correspond with your own content. It doesn't make sense to link from site in different niche. If your site is about car and your developer site is about car then it's good. There is some exception like you should never linked to site which is banned by major search engines such as Google, Yahoo.

 

Some good points, thanks folks

 

You can try using flash link or add rel="nofollow,external" within a link tag.

 

If I want to link to someone I will, Google doesn't own my site, I do.

 

Well, if Google sends me 80% of all my FREE traffic, on which my earnings depend, then I'd better listen to Google.

Google controls the internet already, whether you believe or not.

 

Touchet Gaunarjk,

people with the attitude of 'sod google' clearly dont get the point when people have invested thousands, tens of thousands and even more in an internet business and google plays with them like a toy.

Google changes its way of indexing sites, google changes the way it penilizes sites, google changes the way it ranks your site and the more we share our experiences the more we can adjust our online marketing to follow their rules.