4 websites on same IP crosslinking in footer

[JeremyNathan]

Hello, we have 3 separate websites and domains.

Industry directory websites

Industrialdomain.com DA:62, 8yrs old

Medicaldomain.com DA:45, 8yrs old

and

Hosptalitydomain.com DA:24, 1yr old

These sites are cross linked site-wide via footer links and the sites flow a substantial amount of well converting traffic between each other.

How does Google see this? Could we place the links in a better position than the footer?

The links should be site-wide as we receive many deep visits to these sites from organic and PPC sources.

Our traffic is down 20% post penguin, we are going through the backlinks now and weeding out some iffy links but the site has never been forum spammed or anything even close to that.

One other thing is that they are linked to with anchor text type links
For example, 
Hospitality Equipment  
Medical Supplies & Devices 
Industrial Directory

It may be best to start of just linking with an image.

[JeremyNathan]

Yeah it looks wrong to me having anchor text there...

Im also going to go through the site and remove any other anchor text type links

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Hi Jeremy,

Most of the time folks use inbred footer links for nefarious purposes, so Google generally tends to look down on these types of links and devalue them.

In your case however, it seems you actually have a use for them as they bring you a good amount of relevant traffic to your various sites.

But you have to be careful. Footer links generally carry very little value and cause more potential harm than good. And as you noted, sitewide anchor text (especially in the footer!) can get you in trouble in a Penguin kind of way.

The good news is 3 sites isn't a lot, and it's possible you haven't tripped any penalty filters.

I do like your idea about changing up the anchor text. Do you rank for those terms? If so, have you seen a drop or rise in the past year? It may be beneficial to experiment with images and less commercial anchor text.

Seems like your on the right track. Let us know how it goes!