ZydoSEO - 7:31 pm on Mar 5, 2013 (gmt 0)

Some self referencing links are pretty much unavoidable for most sites... specifically in your navigation (top navigation and left navigations if using inverted "L" type site architecture).

In most main navigations, you'll highlight the navigation entry that was clicked on to arrive at a page. Very few sites actually change a navigation menu item from a link to simply a label once it's clicked on. Typically they remain a link with a different backgrownd color.

As long as the self-referencing link is part of the page template (header, navigation, footer) it likely has no inpact on rankings. Sites have been built this way since the beginning of time. It's standard practice for most every CMS theme and non-CMS web site on the web. So I don't see the practice negatively affecting rankings.

But if you're placing self-referencing links in the main content portion of the page (within the article on the page for example), that could very well be a red flag.