A link in the first paragraph passes more value than the same link in the footer, and the reason comes down to how search engines read context versus boilerplate.
A first-paragraph link sits inside the page’s main content, surrounded by the words that establish what the page is about. Search engines weight in-content links more heavily because their placement reflects two things at once: editorial intent, since you placed the link in this sentence because it genuinely relates to what you are writing, and click likelihood, since a reader moving through the body is far more likely to follow an in-text link than a footer one. A footer link sits in boilerplate, the repeated furniture that appears on every page of the site. Search engines treat that boilerplate as navigation and weight it less, precisely because it appears everywhere and carries no specific topical relationship to the page it sits on.
This is not about vertical position for its own sake. A link is not stronger simply because it appears higher up. It is stronger because of where it lives: inside unique, relevant content rather than in a repeated template. A contextual link buried in the third paragraph still outpulls a footer link, because the body text around it gives the link meaning that boilerplate never can.
The practical consequence is that your most important internal links belong in the body, woven into sentences that explain why the destination is relevant, not parked in a footer menu where they read as navigation rather than recommendation. Footer links still serve a purpose for site structure and discovery, but they are not how you pass real relevance.
Look at one of your own pages and sort its internal links by where they live. The ones inside your main content, surrounded by relevant text, are doing the heavy lifting. The ones in the footer are handling structure, not topical weight. If a link genuinely matters for relevance, move it into the body where its context can work for it.