112 exact match anchor text internal links in the sidebar

[InigoOU]

Hello,

My website has 112 internal exact match sidebar links for my targeted keyword. I rank nr.5 for this keyword in Google and i was wondering if i should remove those links  or not?

I know that footer link are no no but i am not sure about sidebar links. Any ideas?

Regards,

InigoOÜ

[LynnPatchett]

Hi,

If I understand right these are internal links on your own site? If that is the case then it is not a huge deal (although you should be careful to not go overboard on keyword stuffing your internal links). Sitewide footer and sidebar links on EXTERNAL sites are often done with an eye on boosting search engine rankings and as such have been de-valued by google and sites using this tactic a lot have in some cases been penalized. This is not so relevant for your own site where it is perfectly normal to expect to see footer and sidebar links highlighting main pages/categories of the site. Just be careful to not keyword stuff too much and try to link in a way that helps user experience and feels natural and you should be ok.

Hope that helps!