Sitewide Links - Do They Affect Ranking or Not ?

[colemans]

I have lost some rank on quite a few sites over the last 2 months - and although many are saying Panda 4.0 I also personally think there is something to do with links as well brought in with this update.

The only possible 2 things I can see which might adversely affect the sites as regards links are:

Sitewide Links - I have a couple of sitewide links which have been used which is a directory site & niche related but with generic anchor text - i.e visit website ?

Could this be an issue does anyone think ?

Anchor Text - Havent even used same anchor more than once but seems that naked url's seem to be doing the trick now more than anchors ?

[aakk9999]

Have you introduced sitewide links (or added new sitewide links) to your sites recently?

With regards to loss of ranking, have you lost fat head or long tail? What hapened to your traffic?

Can you tie your ranking loss to Panda 4.0 update? I mean, was it sharpish drop around the Panda 4.0 update date or are your ranking sliding down over a period of time?

[colemans]

The sitewide links have been there for 6 months

All traffic has gone down - but sites are still generating a good amount of traffic

There were 2 drops - 1 in April and then climbed back and then 1 at Panda

I am not sure whether this is sitewide links or anchor's......I have seen a lot of ppl now not using anchors and just using naked url + bold text with kw close to naked url