Could a sitewide footer EXACT MATCH anchor text link hurt or potentially penalize a site?

[jbster13]

I am pretty sure this would hurt rankings yet I just want another's opinion on it.

Would a sitewide footer link with exact match keyword anchor text to the page you want to rank for your main keyword hurt you? Basically if it were a link to the homepage, yet you wanted to make the anchor text your main objective keyword, would it hurt to have this in the footer along with the logo link at the top of a page that is just "home" anchor text?

[AlanBleiweiss]

Yes!

Since as long ago as late 2010, I've seen specific sites penalized for abuse of exact match anchor text in footers.  For a long time it was strictly a "keyword specific" penalty (de-ranking just for that phrase), however with the latest indications, it's possibly also a contributing factor to the Penguin problem (or another "anchor text specific" update Google made in April)...

Either way, sitewide footer links need to be clean if used at all.  So I don't recommend anchor text to a home page.  It should instead just be "Home" or something similar...

[zigojacko]

In my opinion, it depends if we're talking external linkage here or internal linkage.

Sitewide linking out externally to sites with keyword rich anchor text can contribute massively to making the domain being linked to's link profile looking largely unnatural (if all followed links).

However, with internal linkage, I agree that it's advisable not to link back to your homepage with keywords as the anchor text, but other footer navigation with the appropriately labelled anchor text for each link is pretty acceptable in my view - as long as the reason behind this is for usability rather than for SEO.

[AlanBleiweiss]

I agree Geoff - home should be home not "keyword phrase", but you can use keywords on other footer nav links if it makes sense from a user perspective, and again, purely within the site.