Attribution Links

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Uroš Grumerec: Dear all, I have a question and hope someone will be able to help me. I use Creative Commons images on my travel website. The attribution includes a link to the page where the image resides, and a link to the Creative Commons license (here's how a typical page looks like: http://travelslovenia.org/piran-slovenia/). I usually include 5-15 images per page (that means 10-30 links). How bad is that for SEO? I would be very grateful for any feedback one could might be able to give me.
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  PromozSEO: You don't have to give them any SEO credits, so you can mark them nofollow. Do not create image links to those sites better put naked link and on click, open those in new tabs (target="_blank").
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  Nebojsa Djukic: Hi Uroš, no need to create image links. If you want to give some credits to photographers you can mention them on the end of a page and include nofollow links to their profiles/websites.
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  Edwin Jonk: Since you already have rel nofollow, you don't give any search value. Besides that, with creative commons you have to give credit:
  
  " You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. " [1]
  
  The way you give credit is considered best practise. [2] So I don't see any issue. Also keep in mind that if you don't give appropriate credit, the owner can submit a DMCA request, which can impact your search traffic. ;
  
  [1] ;https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
  [2] ;https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Best_practices_for_attribution
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  Uroš Grumerec: +PromozSEO , +Nebojsa Djukic , +Edwin Jonk thank you so much, I really appreciate you taking the time to answer me.
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  Uroš Grumerec: +Edwin Jonk ; I have one additional question. Let's say I have five CC BY-SA 2.0 images on one page - that means 5 nofollow links to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ . Is that bad for SEO?
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  Edwin Jonk: No, creativecommons.org isn't a bad neighbourhood. That is, if you link to shady sites it can affect you. However creative commons is not a shady site.  ;
  
  Personally I do not see any issue with regard to the credit links. In contrast, you are an example on how to provide credits.
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  Uroš Grumerec: +Edwin Jonk thank You for your quick reply, sorry just one more question if you don't mind: SEO-wise, how many CC images per page do you recommend? For Podcetrtek (http://travelslovenia.org/podcetrtek-slovenia/) I used 21 images (that's 42 outbound links). Is that too much SEO-wise? Should I limit myself to a cerain number of CC images/outbound links per page?
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  Edwin Jonk: No.
  
  Maybe you searched the web and you got some old best practise, therefore let me give you some background. It used to be that you shouldn't have more than 100 links. But these days it is not the case. ;
  
  The reason (according to Google) was that Google would only index about 100 kb [1]. Although Google dropped that before 2008, it was still somewhat considered best practise. However these days, it does really matter. And Google clearly stated that in 2013. [2]
  
  Of course, if you have huge amounts of links pointing to spammy sites, Google can penalise you. But the way you are linking (to creative commons and to the original source) it is not an issue. In contrast, the way you are linking is best practise. ;
  
  [1] ;https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-many-links-per-page/
  [2] ;http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-we-dropped-the-100-links-per-page-guideline-but-we-may-take-action-if-it-is-too-spammy-178197
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  Uroš Grumerec: +Edwin Jonk Thank you so much for that! I really appreciate it. Thanks again!
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  Nebojsa Djukic: +Uroš Grumerec ; I don't like image links because there will always be some visitors that will click an image and will never hit back button to back to your page.
  
  In other words, image links are one of ways to lose your visitors.
  
  Maybe your images should not be linked, but you can include a link to a photographer profile somewhere in the image description.
  
  If you want to make your images clickable, make sure to include  ; ;target="_blank" so images will open in a new window.
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  Uroš Grumerec: +Nebojsa Djukic Thank you for the advice; I'll consider that.