Safe percentage of sitewide links?

[ProjectLabs]

I've read that following the Penguin update, too many sitewide links can be a risk.

What percentage of your linking domains are sitewide? What is a good percentage to aim for?

[eyepaq]

There is no recipe for it but overall it has to make sense. If most of the links are site wide for sure that's not a natural link profile.

I would keep them around or bellow 10% if possibile, as long as the rest are natural. If the rest of the links are un-natural then the ratio is point less anyway.

Again, I use as a threshold the 10% but there is no magic number. Depending on the site (niche) some can even go higher as for some websites it make sense for people to link site wide.

[NakulGoyal]

I agree with eyepaq. There is no recipe for success. It varies on case to case basis.

Think about questions like:

1. How old are those sitewide links ?

2. How many of those sitewide links are somehow related to each other ?

3. How good / natural is the rest of your link profile ?

4. Are the links related ?

5. Are those sitewide links around specific anchor text ?

The answers to these questions should lead you to come up with an opinion. Go with what makes sense.

Too many of any one kinds of links is a problem. Don't overdo anything.

[irvingw]

It has been a long time strategy of ours to remove ANY site that is linking to us sitewide. Email the webmaster and ask him to make your link a homepage only link. Sitewides are discounted at best and penalized at worst so I would recommend removing all of them when you come across them.

They usually come in form of a blogroll link which has been a bad method of link building for many years, and your sitewide link is lumped in with other sites in the blogroll who all have sitewides as well, so their chances of getting penalized are greater too. Then you will be listed sitewide with a penalized domain which is linked sitewide. So now you share a more similar link profile having thousands of links on the same page with a penalizes site or sites. AND you have thousands of links with the same anchor text. It just bad all around.