Quick Tips to Do Footers Like a Pro & Avoid Rookie Mistakes

Do you remember when you could stuff your footer with links to internal pages with keyword-rich anchor text? Google hardly gives any weight at all to footer links; it is not worth having a penalty for unnatural links when they links do not help you. People used to add a list of keywords, without links, in the footer as well. Again, this hurts, not helps, your SEO efforts.

You may wonder why you should even have a footer, except to signal to visitors that they have reached the end of the page. You copyright notice goes in the footer, along with your company address if applicable. The latest trend is to put links to rarely looked at internal pages in the footer, so your main menu isn't overwhelmingly long. Pages such as your site map and your privacy policy are rarely viewed; your links to those pages belong in the footer and not in your main menu.

Put your About Us page in the footer as well, unless it is integral to your brand. For example, if your website is Mary's Handmade Soaps, then put your About Mary page in the main menu. It's likely that people would want to know about Mary while shopping on the website. If your website is called Mary's Soaps and you sell soaps from a variety of manufacturers, put your About Us page in the footer.

Stay away from companies that pay you to place links in your footer. Since these links are site wide, Google is wise to this practice, and has been for quite a while. Your site will be penalized very quickly.

Also, beware of free WordPress templates with links in the footer that you cannot remove. Get your templates straight from WordPress instead. It is okay to have a no-follow link for the template or web designer, however, just their name, with no link, is even better.