Recently I have been making some progress in google for some important keywords. I'm on page 2, for most keywords but can't seem to crack the top 10. Most of the sites that are on page 1 are well established sites, with a decent amount of backlinks. However, a new player has entered the game and I noticed that they have been able to get into the top ten on google. The only links they have are from about 3-4 sites (which are so much alike it is apparent that it is the same owner/company) and they are all sitewide links. Of course google does not show all links but there seems to be no other kinds of links other than the ones cross linked. I don't have any sitewides, but after seeing this perhaps maybe it is the best thing to do to get on page one. Any opinions?
I co-founded a web development company that I no longer work for. When I was at that company, most of our links were sitewide links with the same exact anchors in the footer of every site we did. We did eventually get into DMOZ (before it was so hard to do) and get a bunch of links in all the "website designer directories" that we didn't ask for. However, off of mostly sitewide links, we accomplished a PR6. Some say sitewide looks artificial and hurts, but I have seen no evidence of this in my work.
I've found site wide links to be favorable. You may just need to create a another site or two of your own.