There had been a lot of discussions in different forums, groups and blogs on the issue if site wide links are good or not from search engine’s perspective. Same thing happened in case of paid links.

However, a lot of webmasters restrained them from going out for site-wide links.

But think about it from a different perspective – Would you buy a painting by Picasso unless it is signed by him! Or, do you think that a painter would leave the opportunity to sign a masterpiece!

If you are a web designer or contributed to develop or promote a website, what is wrong in getting a link from them? It is important for your branding – not just for the link value. If Google says ?no’ – it must think twice.

At the same time I would like to say there are also a lot of sayings that you must get links from related websites. Now, tell me another thing – which websites fall under the category of similar websites for a web designing company or a web development company or a web marketing company or a seo company!

They can simply move forward and try to get links from any domain (even P 0 R N – if you design those websites). However, before you start getting such links think twice if your business domain support such a wide category – just try to establish a logical relation and move ahead?

But does this mean that site-wide link is good?

In my opinion, one link from one domain is good enough – simply enough. Don’t put the link on the common template.

But, if all your incoming links are site wide links, this is not a good or healthy sign. This actually develops a pattern – if you are a good website, you would get natural links from different websites – content based, forum posts etc. You must create a versatile link jungle. The same rule applies to reciprocal link building too.

And I can show you many SEO or web designing websites who are ranking high for different competitive keywords and they have huge pull of site-wide links (they have other links too).

And the last point – do not use the word “website design by NBB” in all the websites as anchor text – this is spam. And if Google thinks you are spamming, you have nothing to complain.