Should sitewise links always be branded

[BobGW]

Hello,

A client has 8 sitewide links with the same anchor text - their main keyword. They have 84 linking root domains total. 3 of the 8 are his own sites. 4 of the sitewide links are in the footer (all 3 of his own sites interlink in the footer) In the last 5 months, rankings for the the top 2 short-tail keywords have dropped even though they should rank higher.

In a few days they're going to do some major rearranging with one of the 8, adding nofollows sitewide because of a partnership disagreement.

Would there be any negative consequences, do you think, to right away changing all of the footer links of the 3 sites that the site owner owns to branded anchor text (domain.com)?

Should we change all the sitewides to branded anchor text?

There have been no problems in GWT.

[irvingw]

I would definitely not use anchor texts you don't want to be suppressed for. Branding is safest but you could use very long tail with main anchor text so you still have the main keywords but if you get penalized it won't be for the main term.

I would ask the webmaster to make them homepage only and not sitewide.

[BobGW]

I'm thinking branding to clean up the anchor text profile.

We wouldn't want to get suppressed for searches for our brand though.

[irvingw]

yea you can definitely do that, I would still get them homepage only since that is the page that passes the most PR anyway and sitewides are dangerous. There is a higher threshold for anchor text with your brand name because Google expects people to link to you that way and it's the name of your company right, your domain name isn't your main keyword I am assuming.

[jws8118]

Branded sitewide footer links should be ok as long as your domain isn't an EMD.  If you do have an EMD then I would not use site-wides and go with advice of Irving about making them homepage only.

[BobGW]

It's not an exact match domain. The domain contains part of the main keyword phrase

[BobGW]

Should we avoid making too many anchor text / nofollow changes at one time?

[BobGW]

Jamesscaggs,

Do you know if I should avoid making too many anchor text/nofollow changes at one time with more than one sitewide backlink?