Spammy looking footers are now definitely bad for you as of at least 2008, as are lists of links with tightly aligned anchor text. If I am going to link out to 25 locations on the page, say chiropractors, my links are going to be 25 "City_Name" or possibly "City_Name State" instead of "City_Name Keyword" or "City_Name State Keyword", because a list that looks like this looks spammy:
New York City Chiropractor
Brooklyn Chiropractor
Edison Chiropractor
ETC.
Agree with Jonah above, if you think sticking a huge list of keywords in your sidebar or footer isn't hurting your SEO you need to wake up!
Spammy looking footers are now definitely bad for you as of at least 2008, as are lists of links with tightly aligned anchor text. If I am going to link out to 25 locations on the page, say chiropractors, my links are going to be 25 "City_Name" or possibly "City_Name State" instead of "City_Name Keyword" or "City_Name State Keyword", because a list that looks like this looks spammy:
New York City Chiropractor
Brooklyn Chiropractor
Edison Chiropractor
ETC.
If it looks spammy, Google probably thinks it is.