You've no doubt heard all the buzz around Google Penguin, the latest batch of changes to Google's indexing algorithm. When I think "Penguin", I think "Happy Feet", one of my kids favorite animation movies. And when I think "Happy Feet", I think about all those website footers out there that make Google Penguin sad!
It seems that the most influential part of the new changes revolve around anchor text, and put a strong focus on over-optimized footer links. The good news is, this is an easy remedy for most of us. To re-optimize all of the anchor text within the body of our site pages will require a good amount of work, but the footer is generally part of the website template.
My feeling is to tackle the footer first, as it's the easiest, and might reward you with a small boost in your search ranking.
To summarize, ditch those footer links, then read this article!