Link on footer across site or just 1 home page, see below

Hi there. I wanted to ask and get opinion from seo experts on following:

I am going to be providing informative articles for my industry which many sites will want, and I'm going to give us website unique articles so it's best for my linking.

These articles will be listed on their website kind of like a library page and their will be brief 2 sentence summary and if they like article they click link which takes to full article on my website.

Anyways, I want to be sure their page has the best PR possible. I know it's more difficult to get website owners to make a section called "articles" as a part of their template so that the article page will have more internal links and greater PR I would imagine and spiderability. Is this so much better than them having 1 link from their home page that says "articles" which takes to the library page of all my articles on their site which is just 1 click away from home page.

I just want to know how much i should push and try to get this "article" page embedded either in footer of each page or their menu system or it really won't make a difference in PR of page

thanks in advance

OK... I read your post twice to be sure that I understand it completely and am going to give you a very honest reply.


That's really generous of you. Sounds like you want my site to be a traffic donkey for your site.


Do you really think that a webmaster with a valuable site will stink it up like that just for you?

I would not do that for the Pope.


If somebody gives you a single link you should consider it as a huge gift. You should be kissing their feet.

I really think that you need to reconsider your position. You will get a lot more cooperation by giving away something valuable than demanding control of other people's websites.

I told you that I would be completely honest. I would rather not have links to your site on mine if you think that you can run my site.

Here's the best advice I can give to you. Get a copy of Steve Covey's book about The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. Read it completely. There is one section in it that is very important. The section where he talks about "Think Win-Win". After you understand that completely I think you will be ready to go out looking for links. If you don't understand "win-win" you are not going to be effective.

well, you don't understand my entire strategy, it's not like that. i have a separate real estate hub where i'm offering people to post unlimited listings, testimonials, articles and they can have links throughout... so it's "you scratch my back and i'll do same"

my crowd are realtor sites which we both know are not cream of crop, the fact of matter is my site is has better PR than their's, I'm doing them more of a favor than to me.

ok, i'm ready for you knock out blow! i'll crawl in my corner since i know i'll be hounded out.

seriously, please answer my question, there will be people that won't mind, how much of a difference does it make?

If you have a separate site that these people can use for their business then you are giving them something in exchange. I hope that they enjoy using it.

Nobody knows for sure how google or other search engines value links... so I will say what I would do and that is shooting in the dark.

I don't think that footer links are given a lot of weight by the search engines. The footer is often used for linking to privacy policy, contact us, etc. that are usually not too important for web visibility. Footers are often used for paid links.

I would rather have a link from the content area of the homepage than a link in the footer across the site. I think that one homepage content area link would be just as good - maybe better than a footer link.

I think that webmasters should be given a choice. Something like this....

1) link to the article menu in the content area of your homepage

2) link to the article menu in the site-wide footer

3) link to the article menu in your left side navigation

4) link to the article menu from the content area of all listing pages

This will give the webmaster a choice... they might pick one that is easy to implement... or one that suits their website philosophy.

I believe that you will benefit from this diversity of many different ways of linking.