Question on sitewide links?

[Brokerstar]

Just a quick question.

Does a sitewide link on a site that has 100 pages count as 100 new links (say the link was in the footer) or is it still just classed as one link as far as the search engines are concerned as it's from one domain?
Regards

Broker

[OPC]

Just a quick question.

Does a sitewide link on a site that has 100 pages count as 100 new links (say the link was in the footer) or is it still just classed as one link as far as the search engines are concerned as it's from one domain?
Regards

Broker

It depends. From what I have seen, if a site is capable of passing rank on all pages, it counts across the board.

[zzpot]

It is generally believed that a site-wide link counts just a little bit more than a main page link (if any). And in the SEO community, site-wide links are considered bad (meaning they could be discounted by Google and count even less than 1 main page link), as they are viewed as unnatural. On the other hand, they are kind of considered ok within blogs, as there are part of the blog CMS.

100 blogroll links will not count much more than 1 link, otherwise everybody and his mother would start blogs today. Jesus Chris has been assumed to multiply fish and bread, but not links.

[Michael Martinez]

Each search engine has its own rules for links. For example, Yahoo! says the first link they discover from a domain counts more than other links (to the same destination). Google doesn't really say anything officially but they've blocked some sitewide links from passing value while allowing others to pass value.

Links normally pass value on a document-to-document basis. Some people have speculated (without offering proof of any kind to support the speculation) that Google (and perhaps other search engines) allows domains to pass value through their collective interlinkage. I suspect these speculations are really confusing correlations with causes.

Still, if you assume for the sake of discussion that sitewide links only pass value on a document-to-document basis -- AND that the links are not being filtered or blocked by the search engines -- then it's better to have sitewide links than individual links because the sitewide links will help ensure frequent crawling for your own pages.

Nonetheless, in practice most SEOs find that it's better to have a broad backlink profile that doesn't rely too much on any one type of link. When you have achieved that kind of linkage, you no longer care about whether a link you obtain is sitewide or not. It really doesn't matter.