Lets say my site is related to layouts, and I want to have a link on a site that's indirectly related to layouts, for instance, file/photo sharing. Will search engines be able to see this? Or does the site have to have the term "layouts" in it to be revelant? How are two sites considered "revelant"? Second question, if a site has little to none out going links, and has 2-3 footer links, will those links be given a lot of weight by search engines? Does the number of pages of a sitr indexed by google have any effect on weight?
Google will at least pickup if the site you are linking too is relevant or not and they probably use a number of factors in checking if a site being linked too is relevant or not. As for question 2, I wouldnt know the answer to it because I havent actually tested it.
As far as i know, footer links can be determined, same for links under 'adverts' blocks, best form of natural looking links are incontent.
That will be considered as a relevant link, Google looks at a combination of things to determine relevance of 2 pages
Ok you are fine with loosely related niches to yours via LSI/Phrase based indexing aspects. Things should easily be identified in the scenario you have described… Footer links/ Site wide links are easily picked up by page segmentation aspects of the algo and are likely heavily devalued compared to an editorial link OKee Dokkee?