brinked - 3:26 am on Jun 19, 2012 (gmt 0)

I respect your opinion, and like I said, every situation and website is different.

I am not saying you are wrong here. I think we are both thinking 2 completely different ideas of footer links here. I am talking about legit links that are useful that can be found in the footer or above the footer. Such as related stories/products, other top pages, newly added, featured etc etc.

We have about 13 sites up and running, and only 2 of our lower/middle sites got affected that do revenues in the low/mid 6 figures each. Our higher/bigger quality websites did not get affected that have footer and/or sidebar links but for other reasons I believe. However, we still are adjusting our sites that did not get hit including removing most footer and sidebar links.

I have seen some ugly websites in my time. Poorly structured, unorganized slops of filth. They go against everything a typical "seo professional" would recommend. Despite this ugliness, they were not effected once by any update. They don't care about seo they dont even know what seo is. Heck most of them are so big they dont even need search engine traffic.

I don't think just removing footer links will get you out of the Panda or Penguin penalty, but I do believe it will help and is just 1 piece of the big pie. As I mentioned, I have adjusted several things and the positive results are showing.

1 piece of the big pie is exactly right. Ever since panda was released, everyone has been repeating what you are now saying. Boiler plate site navigation, footer links, duplicate product descriptions, duplicate content, empty tag pages blah blah blah. Well this has all spread and many webmasters have made these changes, yet we are still not seeing an overwhelming amount of recoveries. Its not just that they aren't coming forward, the ones that are being tracked publicly are all still stick in the panda. So nobody has any clear idea how to get out of panda and sgt-kickaxe's assumption is as good as any.

The few trusted experts are the single entrepreneurs that make net revenue in the 8 figures. Now, if you personally make $10-$30 million net a year then I would respect your opinion more. If you don't, I will continue to trust my experience and the people in my small inter-circle, but you can feel free to laugh in their successful face if you wish.

I do not yet make $10-$30 million a year. I have 2 clients who are global brands that make over $50 million a week and they trust me with everything from the development of their site to their marketing. I can guarantee that the people in your inter-circle did not become as successful as they are based on seo knowledge alone. To make that kind of money online you need to have a legit business and a real presence online. You can only get so far with just seo knowledge. I do not mean to be rude, but that is a pretty shallow statement to make stating that wealthy peoples opinions matter more than others.

Again, as I mentioned, every website and situation is different with dozens of very important factors that come into play. All I am saying, based on experience, is I wouldn't recommend adding 150 internal links to your footer or sidebar to every page/most pages on your website. Take it with a grain of salt, and all I'm doing is trying to help and share real life experiences.

I don't think anyone was really getting at 150 internal links in the footer. But heck, if a site warrants that many links, why not? If you have a site that is thousands and thousands of pages, then you are probably going to need hundreds of links on every page so people can find all this content.