Section-level pages good candidates for SEO?

If so, are they "hurt" by increasing overall number of nav bar links?

[Winooski]

My understanding is that, for Google, section-level pages are good candidates for optimization because they're linked-to throughout the site. For example, if you wanted to target the keyword phrase "wooden widgets", you might make a section-level page called "Wooden Widgets", and you would have a link to this page in your site-wide nav bar, i.e., a link to it from every single page on the site.

(1) Is the above statement true, all other things being equal?

(2) If it is true, then is the relevance of that section-level page for "wooden widgets" affected by the number of site-wide links on the nav bar?

For example, say Google finds that this "wooden widgets" section-level page is indeed somewhat relevant for the phrase "wooden widgets". Should you then minimize the number of links in the nav bar, say, to 25 links on every page, or is it OK if the sidebar has, say, 200 links on every page. In other words, would the number of nav bar links affect the ranking of this page for Google searches for "wooden widgets"?

[rcjordan]

In my experience, 1 = yes , 2 = yes. Personally, I wouldn't dillute the links, but keep the focus narrow. Think "anchor text" on the lower-order pages.

[Winooski]

Thanks rcjordan! Sorry to be dumb, what do you mean by:

Think "anchor text" on the lower-order pages.

...?