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Great discussion and suggestions here already, but I wanted to add this post in case you haven't seen it: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tactical-seo-how-many-termsphrases-should-i-target-on-a-single-page

There's lots of good stuff in the comments there, too.

When it comes to single page sites, make sure you're matching strategy appropriately. It's very hard to win the long tail, and there's often a lot of domain authority value (if the site/page earns lots of links) that goes unspent, meaning you could have more pages/content that could rank well if you added them to the site.

I like to think of these one-pagers as being great promotional vehicles that can later be wrapped into a larger marketing/brand effort by rel-canonicaling or 301'ing back to a reproduction of the content on your larger site. Maybe it's just the thrifty SEO in me, but I hate to see that domain authority wasted

Hrm. On #1 - maybe sometimes? It really depends on the case scenario. A blogroll link is often either on every page or a separate page linked to on every other page of the site (like SearchEngineLand). That probably gets you 99% of the value you'd get from links to your homepage from another blog. Just having another link from a "what's hot" or "recommended" section doesn't seem like it would do that much more (unless you're talking in terms of user CTR and the benefits that brings, in which case, yes - I like it!)

On #2 - Never heard that. I'd probably say that if the link in the footer is manipulative, ask that it be somewhere else. If it makes sense/belongs there, it's probably OK to have it followed.

My general stance would be to worry only if the links are obviously manipulative or non-editorial. If you've just happened to receive links from partners, clients, fans or bloggers that appear in footers sitewide, that's not a big issue. Look at networks like Conde Nast or Techmeme - sitewide links back and forth between all the related properties is a common thing.

They almost certainly don't pass the same value as separate, individually created links from each of those pages - the diversity of your link profile matters a lot, but unless there's other reason they look spammy, I wouldn't sweat it.

BTW - I also wouldn't intentionally target or pursue these kinds of links. SEOs used to do that when PageRank was the big dog in the algo, and every bit of PR juice meant more value, but nowadays, PR is just a small component of rankings.