Ok -- I am not sure if I described it correctly, but here is the situation: I have tons of links (20+) at the bottom of my site that link to pages within my site that each have articles on them focused around that keyword. This 'bottom seciton' of my site is shared with all pages of my site. Is it bad that I have all these articles on my site? Also -- should I not 'share' it AKA make it sitewide? Thanks
I don't think you have a problem having these links as sitewide links because they are internal and to your pages only.
The links may not count for much as sitewide footer links. If they are useful articles, I don't see any other problem with it though.
I have sitewide links at the bottom of my website. All links go to important sections. Many popular websites do this, e.g. Skype. I think it serves as a kind of "mini site map" helping visitors finding what they were looking for.
Some people have suffered the -950 penalty for too many site-wide footer links targeting specific phrases. What happens is that Google sees you are trying to manipulate the SERPs and moves your pages to the end of the last page in Google for the terms you have in your footer links. If you find this happens to you then the first thing you can do to fix is is remove the footer links. I wouldn't do the site wides. Instead I'd find a high PR relevant page for each term and put a link from there.