Do sitewide links from other sites hurt SEO?

[Ron10]

A friend of mine has a pagerank 3 website that links to all my pages on my site on every page of his site.  The anchor text of all these links are the title of each page that it links to.  Does this hurt SEO?  I can have him change to the links to whatever i want, so if it does hurt, what should i change the anchor text to if needed?

Thanks mozzers!

Ron

[BeardoCo]

It really depends on what kind of site your friend's site is?  Is it relevant to your business niche?  How many links does the site point out to?  I think it looks a little unnatural for it to always link exactly to the page title.  I prefer one link from one root domain and I try to aim for it not to be in the footer.  Can't really say if its going to hurt your SEO effort - only trial and error will let you know

[FedeEinhorn]

I would definitely remove those links. They were unnaturally created. Although you are friends and you are not giving him anything in return (that you mentioned), do those links have any value for his visitors? I mean, when their users are on his site, are they likely to click on those links? If not, then not only those are useless backlinks for users but for SEO too.

[Ron10]

yes, his site is related to  mine. it's a music site and so is mine.  His site links to about 8 pages on my site with all the links in about the middle of his pages and these links are on about 8 pages on his site.  Not too crazy but i wasn't sure if there was something new in google's filters that might cause problems.  Google is getting so picky these days   Knowing more about it, what do you think now?  Should i leave them or have him change some of the links.  I could use some brand anchors or just vary the anchor text a bit.

[Branagan]

If it's a quality site, relevant to your niche and the links are useful for both sites users, everything should be fine, and both sites could benefit from the exchange.

If in doubt, you can always ask for an editorial link instead of site-wide links.

Check out this video for more info: Whiteboard Friday - Sitewide, Reciprocal, and Directory Links