Removing a sitewide backlink without damaging the domain

[BobGW]

Hello,

I have a client that partnered up with a person in his field 4 years ago and got him to place a sitewide link to his site, high domain authority.

Now with recent developments this site owner wants to take off these links so that they won't leak pagerank. The person insists in taking all the links off with his next website redesign.

I have found several years ago in my own SEO efforts that removal of a sitewide link actually damages the domain. Is this still true?

Should he ask for a nofollow or will that change damage our domain as well?

Is there any way he can not take a huge hit on this? He doesn't mind the loss of links, he just don't want to be damaged.

Please only post if you have recent experience with sitewide link removal, or if you have something related or a solution.

[JonQ]

This post is deleted!

[nicolebd]

I recently look down a sitewide link from one site to another. The site that received the sitewide link had a page rank of 3 and the one that gave it had a pagerank of 4. When the next page rank was published the site's page rank went down to 2. During this time a few more natural links were received so this must have been the reason (otherwise it should have stayed the same or gone up). It should be noted that the site still got the exact same link from the other site's home page (in the same place it was before - right column)

[SoftzSolutions]

_Ok let us assume that Site A has got sitewide link from Site B and Site B has decided to remove that link. Now, if he is concerned about passing PR juice, he can apply no follow tag against the link. I think this is the most logical approach while getting links from blog roll. Site A is not going to lose any referral traffic and it is kinda safe from Penguin refreshes which are primarily targeting sitewide links.

Yes, I have removed sitewide links for one my websites and to be honest, there has some visibility loss but I managed to make up for the loss by earning some quality links for the website.   _