Hi, I am new at seo and I just learned about sitewide links. Does MSN count sitewide Links? I read on other forums some people say MSN count sitewide links, while other say MSN placed a penalty on their site. Also I would like to know for members here who have thousands of posts, wouldn't placing a link in their sig be considered a sitewide link?
There is some kind of damper on sitewides with all search engines. For example, The first link is good, the second link is ok, but the third through xxxx links are discounted or not counted at all. This means the link doesn't have to be sitewide, it just has to reside on several pages within the domain. Thus, forum sig links would fall into this category since every forum post will result in a link. Don't let this discourage you from sitewides or even forum links though. Just because only the first few links get counted for SEO purposes doesn't mean the link won't generate traffic. I get large numbers of hits from my forum sigs.
Sitewide links are not a bad thing but they should only be used as part of a balanced SEO campaign. If a large proportion of your links are sitewide then your backlink pattern will seem unnatural. Sitewide links can easily be flagged as paid links by google (MSN probably doesn't care) so make sure they are only on related sites.