Footer link from 500 sites pointing to main site

[new_shoes]

I'm doing SEO work for a client's main site, blue-widgets.com.

He is a big player in his field and besides his main blue widgets business, he offers smaller blue widget business a "template" site. Template sites all have a unique domain name, products and owner, but visually are close to identical. All domains are hosted with him on the same IP range. Each template site has about 50-100 pages.

He has over 500 of these sites, each has about 10-50 incoming unique root domain links. On the footer on all of these sites he has a little icon with a link back to blue-widgets.com and a useless alt text. My client controls those footer links.

I'd like the template sites' footer link to point back to the relevant page on blue-widget.com. For example:

• template site small-blue-widgets.com should have footer icon link point to blue-widgets.com/small-widgets with alt text "small blue widgets"
  
• template site funny-blue-widgets.com should have the footer icon link point to blue-widgets.com/funny-widgets, with alt text "funny blue widgets"
  

I'd even go further and on very deep pages, link to corresponding, deep pages. Example:

• funny-blue-widgets.com/tiny-widget should have the footer icon link point to blue-widgets.com/funny-widgets/tiny-widget, with alt text "tiny, funny, blue widgets"

Good idea? What are the risks?

[anallawalla]

It seems that the client also owns those 500 domains. From what I have seen about sitewide footer links within the same owner's network, there isn't a risk so far. Being on the same IP address further reinforces the common ownership.

I can't say what the benefits will be, relative to similar links on 500 independently owned domains. I work with large corporate sites that have dozens of sites linking to them with sitewide sponsorship links (no SEO input in that decision) and there hasn't been any noticeable effect, good or bad. The sponsorships come and go, so the links also come and go.

[lucy24]

If the links are going to be there anyway, why not make them useful to human visitors? Is the site owner being recalcitrant? Can't say why, but that was the impression I got from your post.

[new_shoes]

@anallawalla - Thanks for the feedback. Good to hear that you don't think there is much risk. The clients' site is doing really already, so the last thing I want to do is mess it up.

@lucy24 - Good point, the links should be useful for human visitors too. I don't know if the owner is being recalcitrant (learned a new word, cheers!), but I imagine that the template owners wouldn't want a footer link which is too attractive - it "steals" the template visitors over to the main site.

[goodroi]

This sorta makes me think of the phrase "lipstick on a pig". From my personal POV this is not an ideal way to build up your link power.

If you want to add more "lipstick" here are some other ways to improve the process:
-Offer free content to these smaller companies that is embedded with links
-Offer free images for their website content that links back to your site
-Vary the anchor text
-Vary the template code
-Vary the position of the link (header, sidebar, footer)
-Get multiple reseller hosting accounts from different companies using different ips

[new_shoes]

@goodroi - Excellent suggestions, thanks! Our hands and feets are bit tied at the moment due to how the client prioritizes - we try to suggest things that involve as little work from his dev team as possible.

One question, what did you mean by this?
> Offer free images for their website content that links back to your site