Using sitewide links to improve link profile?

[TheSEOGuy1]

Hi Guys... When I look at my competitor's link profile, they often have thousands of backlinks. For example, one of our main competitor, he got 3,400 backlinks in total but only 80 referring domains.

When I look at my link profile, I have around 50-60 referring domains, but hardly 80 backlinks. My question is, is it okay to get a few sitewide links (no-follow of course!) to get to the thousands backlinks? Or I will be able to achieve top rankings with my current link profile?

Thanks!!

[DougRoberts]

Having thousands of no-follow site wide links is unlikely to be worth very much if anything. You'd be better off getting a small number of links from domains that are authoratitve and/or relevant to your niche. So think about getting links that have a high contextual relevance too. (The content in which they appear is about the same topic).

There's a risk that site-wide links get people into trouble with penguin / unnatural links and anchor text over-optimisation.

The exception here is where the links have the potential to bring you relevant direct traffic which have have a high conversion rate depending on the source.

[DarinPirkey]

There was a great Whiteboard Friday by John Doherty (formerly of Distilled) on smarter internal linking

http://moz.com/blog/smarter-internal-linking-whiteboard-friday

and here is the follow up post

http://moz.com/blog/internal-linking-strategies-for-2012-and-beyond

Also, Ken Lyons wrote an awesome post over at Search Engine Watch back in mid 2012 on internal link structure too.

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2169471/9-Pro-Tips-for-Developing-a-Killer-Internal-Link-Structure

Sitewide links are okay but they need to be relevant for EVERY page they are on.  Don't let the quantity of a link profile concern you.  I have a client that has less than 100 links to his site but has a Domain Authority of 41 because they are from really high authority sites.  Quality of links matter and especially RELEVANCY.  I recommend keeping sitewide links to a minimum.  You can over do them.