many seo companies put their site link in their client site's footer too!

I think that this is a good idea.  It tells me who I should not hire.

Your question has at least two answer perspectives.  1) the site owner, and, 2) google.

Since google has not said what they think about these links then I don't want them on my site in case google does not like them.

From a site owner's perspective I think that those links stink up the design.  They are distracting and useless to my visitors.

I know designers who are really picky about everything, yet they want me to say that odor in the footer is nice.

Irving Weiss makes some great points that I also agree with.

I think it legitimately provides value to the site visitors (that's the main aim of a website isn't it).

How many of those visitors?   0.000000001 (meaning YOU are the only visitor that gets value)?   I think that the reasoning here is weak and biased.

I also feel that if there are a whole bunch of authority sites with footer links pointing to a web design company, it's probably a pretty good sign that they're worthy of ranking high.

I don't know of any authority sites with such links.  Can you name a genuine authority site that I would know about that has such links?

**In saying this I think that the link anchor text should be branded rather than keywords. For example I usually write "Web Design by Static Shift" **

I'll agree with this.

**Am I being blinded by my bias? **

Very biased.

Thoughts aside, and onto the facts...what are people's experiences with footer links for a web design company.

I am paying the designer for doing design work.  He should not expect free advertising as part of the deal unless it is negotiated up front.  I have the attitude that the advertising should cost a lot more than the design job.

I just posted this in another thread but believe that it applies here as well....

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Let me just call this... "logical speculation"....

If you chop a domain's content in half and place it on two different websites, you have also just chopped all of the links, likes, mentions, etc in half.

If you do that you should expect every ranking everywhere to drop - because you now have less domain authority - you cut it in half.

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I used to have a lot of hotdog stand websites... then built a big site that quickly  defeated all of them and most of their competitors.

Who is kicking all of the ass out there right now?. The hotdog stands? Or, the big sites like wikipedia, about, amazon, ebay, ??

If you are going to attack the US Navy which would you rather have?  One battleship or ten potato guns?

I used to run subdomains and then redirected them into folders on the main site and the results have been kickass.  Kickass.

There is always a question about how google is going to treat subdomains but there is never a question about how they are going to treat a big website.

As far as conversions go and impressing your visitors.  Which is going to do a better job.. A hotdog stand or a supermarket?  Which will produce better shopping cart totals though cross selling?

Your questions have been asked in this Q&A over and over again.  If you use search you will find lots of opinions that support the above?

I don't include this information on product pages because it is too long.  The product pages are short and sweet for good conversions, although a link to this additional information is obviously posted for people who view the product pages.

The articles are typically over 1000 words, several photos and a video.

These articles also target keywords that the product pages do not and they pull in a lot more traffic from search than the product pages.  Lots of the traffic that enters these pages moves to the product pages through obvious links and some of them buy the product.

Most of my posts are about "how to use this product".

My goals in creating them are....

1. make helpful content that increases the trust of prospective buyers.. In emails lots of people tell me that they bought from my site because I have so much good content about the product -much more than the manufacturer or any other retailer.

2. make helpful content that answers questions that prospective buyers might have - this saves phone calls and email questions

3. make helpful content that I can link to when someone writes with a question or refer to on the phone

4. get more pages in the SERPs for product-related keywords.  This expands your keyword reach and earns double listings for valuable keywords

you're saying that an internal link within a blog post is good, correct?

This is what I do.  I believe that it is helpful for SEO and helpful to visitors.

I have lots of articles on a blog and every one of them links to a product page whenever that product is mentioned in the article.  (I only link once to that page in each blog post - the first time that the product is mentioned or the mention where I think the reader's interest to view or purchase might be highest.

is there a guideline as to maybe how many links i should put per post?

I have never heard about any "guideline".  I can only say what I do.

One of my post could have links to one, five, ten or twenty products.  Most have three to five.

If those products are mentioned naturally in the post then I link them.  I am not trying to stuff products into posts, just whatever natural writing creates.

should i, from google's perspective?

I can say that internal links can improve rankings and they can transfer small amounts of anchor text value to the target page (or at least that was the case the last time I experimented about  a year ago - who knows what google did yesterday or will do tomorrow).

So, based upon that, if I write an article that has a relevant connection to a product on my site I will make an anchor text link to the product page.

This should be helpful to visitors.  If you are talking about a widget twister in an article the person reading might want to look at one for informational reasons... or they might want to buy one.  Either way, that link helped the visitor.

I have been doing some guest blogging and its hard to find guest blogs opportunities. I have found some but they are direct competitors. Is it safe to write guest post?

This is stepping into the alligator pond.....

One of my competitors offered me a really good article to post on my site.  I really liked the article.  My visitors really like it.  Very low bounce rate, it holds visitors about 5 minutes, ranks really well for lots of money keywords.....

Then he is really upset when that page on my site ranks above his site in lots of SERPs and is pulling thousands of visitors into my site.

He hasn't given me any more articles. 

**I am trying to get an rough estimation anyway....  **

That's good.  Lots of people are selling the $1000/month package to people who need $5000/month to be effective and don't know it.  You are trying to figure it out and that is very important.

Economists call this "ceteris paribus" analysis.

There's an awful lot of variables here.  That's what makes it interesting.