I run a anime related website. I see most of my competitors have backlinks in other related sites footer. Its like a ongoing partnership between them wheras each of them have interconncting backlinks. I was wondering if I should reach out to them and ask for a similar backlinks. I think it doesnt give much traffic but it is done for seo. Now my website is PR3 traffic is very very low. like 200-300/day. But I am concerned with the fact that if any of them do agree on giving me a baacklink in their footer I will be then getting tons of backlinks with a same anchor text. Is it acceptable by google? I saw a video of Mat Cutts on this but the video is dated from 2012. i dont know whats the situation now. Some insight will be really helpfull.
Correct me if I am wrong but didn't Google fixed this already? Google counts every site wide link as 1 link so you won't benefit from bulk links. So it's not bad for your rankings but you won't benefit from it either.
Footer links or site wide links can be useful only if they are related to your website. And You should also look for links that can bring traffic.
none, the best is to get incontent links from pages with good quality content, related to your topic and have actual PR (means indexed )
Google doesn't count footer links as much, but it won't hurt you. Because there are many legitimate sites that do this and Google won't penalize them. But it definitely won't give you a huge boost or anything.