Sitewide links are links that are found on (almost) all subpages on a given website. This will typically be in the fixed page templates (footer, header or sidebar). If a website has 15,000 indexed pages in Google and the other search engines, with a sitewide link you will get 15,000 inbound links (technically speaking).
A few years ago, webmasters and SEOs used sitewide links to achieve higher rankings in search engines, as you could easily “cheat” to get more inbound links.
In April 2012, Google released the Penguin update, which penalized websites with unnatural and bad links. One of the major disadvantages of sitewide links is that you will quickly end up with thousands of links with identical anchor text linking to the same landing page.
Sitewide links and rankings today
Not all sitewide links are created in connection with link building (both internal and external). There are a lot of specific situations where it will be relevant to link to specific pages in the fixed page templates. Google is aware of this, as Matt Cutts describes in this video:
Mentioning the web agency, linking to the privacy policy, or linking to other media owned by the company will be relevant to users.
Google Penguin has undergone more changes than the version that was rolled out in April 2012. Today, Google does not penalize links in the same way, but they devalue their value. Our clear recommendation is that you should not actively try to acquire sitewide links for SEO value, as this will not be the time if you are actively working on SEO.
However, you shouldn’t be afraid that your current or any future sitewide links will harm your page’s rankings in Google.
