Sitewide logo footer link - what's the risk?

[McTaggart]

Hi, an incredibly popular website, with several thousand pages, has offered me a site-wide footer logo link.

The site this popular website would backlink to has 50 high quality backlinks (and low volumes of traffic - it's a new site).

I am tempted to say no, because of the risk of penalty, but then I started wondering whether a logo link posed the same penalty risk as a text link.

[McTaggart]

Thanks for your responses everyone. Really helpful and much appreciated, Luke

[MarieHaynes]

Personally, I'd only take this if the link was nofollowed (i.e. for traffic purposes).  I might consider a followed link using my url as an anchor, but would definitely not do it with a keyword as anchor text.

When considering links like this I would suggest considering the part of the quality guidelines that says, "Would you still do this if search engines didn't exist?"  Ask yourself that objectively.  If the idea is to get the footer link so it helps your SEO, then it has a high chance of looking manipulative to Google and could invoke a penalty/Penguin issue.  But if the idea of the footer link is that it is truly one that drives traffic to your site then it may be ok.

What I find though is that it is hard for webmasters to evaluate these kinds of links objectively.  We often fool ourselves into thinking it is for the traffic when really deep down we know that the purpose is to improve the pagerank of our own site.

If this site owner was willing to give you a footer link, I wonder, if instead, they would give you a mention in a blog post or article?  That may appear more natural in the eyes of Google.

[irvingw]

I would ask them to make it a homepage footer link only or links on an internal page (or 3 pages or so) that are indexed in Google and have some PR.

Sitewide footer links can get you penalized because of the old SEO link building tactic of "sponsored themes" I have seen it happen first hand.

[benjaminspak]

I'd go for it, but I'm a betting man from Las Vegas

Variables:

• How well established is your site?
• Is the site relevant?
• Are their inbound links from well traveled authoritative sources?
• Will their site get alot of traffic in the future?

[DougRoberts]

If you don't want the footer link from them, can you ask them for a single links somewhere else? Don't just dismiss the opportunity - especially if there's an opportunity to get a  good relevant link.

The other thing to consider is not just the value (or risk) of a link for SEO, but also the direct traffic you might get. As a footer link you may not get a lot, but how many visitors would it take via this link before it's worth more than the extra link equity? How qualified would these visitors be? Are they likely convert?

What is the relationship between your site and the popular one you've been offered a link on? Is there an obvious connection that visitors to the sites are going to see?

[BrianCrouch]

I think your instincts are right: there's not a lot of risk, but not a lot of benefit either.

The algorithm doesn't "penalize" for sitewide footer links, it's just not as much of a ranking factor as it used to be. I guess the question is, knowing how popular the origin site is, if the links were set to nofollow, would you still do it? (branding, referral traffic)
If the answer is yes go for it. If it creates a relationship with that site's webmaster, it's a nobrainer.