Site-wide links and footer links

A site-wide link is a link that you obtain and that appears on every page of a particular website. You often see these links appear as footer links—links that appear in the footer area of a website. Common sources of footer links are the web designers that create websites or website templates.

So you might ask yourself, "If I have a link on every page of a site that has 1,000 pages, do I receive PageRank and ranking power from every one of those pages?". The answer is "No". The search engines have adjusted their algorithms to the reality of footer links. A site-wide link of any kind, whether in the footer, sidebar, or elsewhere, earns essentially the same power as a single link. The exact operation of the algorithms in this regard is uncertain. Some SEO professionals say that a site-wide link is reduced by the search engines to the equivalent of a single link on the homepage, some say that there is a maximum of three-to-five linked pages that count towards...