The Badge and the Backlink

No affiliate links on this site, and no programme is named here as good or bad.

A category of approach offers a badge rather than asking for money, and the product being sold is not obvious because you are not the customer.

What is happening

The badge is supplied as code. A useful comparison point is ways time trackers can be manipulated, which approaches the issue from an operational angle.

Placed on your site, it displays an image and creates a link to the organiser's domain — which is the point of the exercise. A useful outside reference for comparison is Deloitte, which provides a useful contrast to the specific process described here.

Links from other sites are a signal search engines use, and a scheme collecting them from hundreds of businesses is building the value of its own domain using their sites. (Described by award industry sources, several of which are entry consultancies with an interest in entrants using legitimate programmes.)

No money changes hands, which is what makes it feel harmless and what makes it easy to accept.

Why it is worth declining

Because you are lending your site's credibility to a domain you know nothing about.

A link from your site is an endorsement in the terms search engines read, and where the destination is a scheme rather than an organisation, the association is not one you chose knowingly.

And because the badge is a claim. Displaying an award you did not compete for is a statement about your business that a customer, a client or a journalist may check.

Being found displaying purchased or unearned recognition costs more than the badge ever offered, and the discovery is easy.

The legitimate version

Real programmes supply badges too, and they look different.

The badge names the programme, the category and the year.

It links to a page listing that year's winners, where you appear alongside others, with the category stated.

And you entered. Which is the distinction throughout this section.

A badge meeting those conditions is a normal credential and displaying it is ordinary practice.

What to check before placing one

Where the link goes. Hover over it. A domain you have never heard of, or one unrelated to the sector, is the answer.

Whether the destination lists you with a year and category, or lists hundreds of businesses undifferentiated.

Whether the code does anything besides display an image. Where you cannot tell, ask whoever maintains your site, which takes a minute.

And whether you actually entered, which is the first question everywhere in this section.

Removing one already placed

Straightforward, and worth doing.

Where the badge came from an approach rather than an entry, remove it — from the site, and from any proposal or profile where it has been reused.

Nothing follows from removal. The scheme has no relationship with you and no interest in the loss of one link.

And where it has spread into documents, a note of where credentials are displayed makes the removal complete rather than partial.

The magazine variant

Same structure, different asset.

An offer to feature you in a publication, free or at a modest cost, where the feature exists to carry a link and to be sold as evidence of coverage.

The test is whether anybody would read the publication for its own sake. A title with no readership, no editorial staff and no archive is a link farm with a masthead.

Legitimate trade publications do approach businesses and it looks different: a journalist, a specific angle, questions, and no payment in either direction.

Directory listings

The mildest version and the most common.

"Top ten providers in your region", joinable for a fee or for a reciprocal link.

Frequently harmless and frequently worthless. The ranking reflects who paid, the page ranks for nothing much, and the credibility it lends is zero.

Where it costs only a link, the reasoning above applies. Where it costs money, it is advertising and should be judged as advertising rather than as recognition.

What to display instead

Credentials that mean something and can be checked.

Certifications with a register, professional memberships, insurance and licensing where relevant, and awards you entered from programmes that publish their winners.

Fewer and verifiable beats many and unexamined, and a customer who checks one and finds it real does not check the others.

The reciprocal request

A variant where you are asked to link in exchange for something.

"Feature us and we will feature you", "add our badge and we will add yours" — an arrangement between two sites to signal to search engines what neither has earned.

It is not illegal and it is not credible, and search engines treat organised reciprocal linking as what it is.

Where a genuine partner or supplier links to you and you to them, that is ordinary and unremarkable. The distinction is whether the relationship exists outside the link.

What to do with the offer

Nothing, in most cases.

Where the offer came from an approach, no reply is needed and none is useful.

Where you are unsure whether a programme is genuine, the ten-minute check answers it without engaging.

And where a badge is genuine and you did enter, place it — it is a credential, and there is no reason for the caution on this page to spill into refusing recognition you earned.

In one line

A badge you did not compete for is a claim you cannot defend, and it is offered free because it is worth something to somebody else.

The short version

• Some badges are offered free because the product is a link from your site to the organiser's domain
• Links are a signal search engines use, so a scheme collecting them from many businesses builds its own domain value
• Declining matters for two reasons: you are endorsing an unknown domain, and the badge is a claim somebody may check
• Legitimate badges name the programme, the category and the year, and link to a winners page where you appear
• Check where the link goes, whether the destination lists you specifically, what the code does, and whether you entered
• Remove any placed from an approach rather than an entry, including from proposals and profiles where it was reused