Website Footer. What Should It Include and How Does It Affect SEO?

March 30, 2021 |

Technical SEO

| Author: Kasia | Comments (2)

Website Footer. What Should It Include and How Does It Affect SEO?

What is a website footer and what should it include? Do its components affect the SEO of your page? In today’s entry, you’ll find answers to the above-mentioned questions. Keep reading!

Table of contents:

What is a website footer?
What to include in a website footer?
What to avoid when designing a website footer?
Website Footer and its impact on SEO

What is a website footer?

When browsing various websites (and developing your own one), you probably pay attention to the design, layout, menu navigation, or usability. Sometimes, you encounter pages that seem less useful or more complex to navigate than others, but you actually aren’t able to determine what’s the reason for that.

A footer is one of the elements that we usually don’t pay a lot of attention to but it actually frequently helps us navigate the site. A footer is located at the very bottom of the website. Its content is usually determined by the nature of a given page.

So, what elements should your website footer contain, and how to design it? We’ll try to answer your questions and provide you with exemplary ways of implementing a website footer.

What to include in a website footer?

1. Contact details

Perhaps your potential customer decides to contact your company after scrolling the whole page. You can make the task easier by placing your contact details in the footer – it can be your email address, phone number or even a contact form. Thanks to it, users won’t need to go back to the top of your site to find the contact tab.

website footer with contact info — Contact details and a map in an exemplary website footer. Source: elve.pl

If you aim at encouraging users to visit your office in person, provide a map with directions in the footer.

2. Sitemap

A sitemap, which is an extra menu in the footer, is one of the most frequently used elements. It facilitates website navigation, makes it possible to provide more links to subpages, and supports SEO by showing Google robots how to navigate the page.

3. Links to social media

A company’s presence in social media is a standard today. Depending on the business activity, people choose various social media channels that facilitate advertising. It’s a good idea to provide links to your channels in the website footer because users who decide to click on them probably won’t return to your company’s home page. Therefore, it’s a good idea to place them at the bottom of the page so that they don’t distract website visitors.

social media handles in footer — A website footer with links to social media. Source: promees.pl/en

4. Newsletter subscription

If you aim at creating a mailing list that can be used for contact with potential customers and lead generation, you can provide the option to subscribe to your newsletter in the footer. It’s a good alternative to pop-ups that are frequently annoying and urge people to give their email addresses.

5. CTA

Call to Action is an essential element of every website. Placing CTA in your website footer can have a positive impact on the conversion rate. This button can encourage people to get in touch with you, check out your new offer, or order a free quote.

6. Terms and privacy policy

Terms and conditions or a privacy policy are the most frequently searched footer elements. They include information about data collected by the website owner and the ways it’s processed. In the case of online stores, these frequently include terms and conditions regarding purchases, returns, or complaints.

7. Information about certificates and awards

A website footer frequently includes information that proves the high quality of products or services offered by the company. If you have a quality certificate or if you’re a member of an organization for entrepreneurs boast about it and expose a list of awards won by your company!

8. Information about delivery and special offers

In the case of online stores, it may be useful to provide information about free delivery or the shipping range and special offers. Such information, together with the CTA, may encourage the user to take advantage of the offer.

9. Copyrights

Almost all websites come with a note saying “all rights reserved” that relates to copyrights and is supposed to discourage e.g. market rivals from copying the content. Although it’s not legal protection (after all, it’s forbidden to copy all kinds of content) it can encourage users to think twice before using the ctrl+c, ctrl+v option.

10. Website author

If an external agency developed your page, it may require you to place such information in the footer. It’s like a portfolio of the company that created the site which is supposed to attract new clients.

What to avoid when designing a website footer?

In the past, people would place a lot of keywords in the footer. However, word stuffing is passe and lack of moderation (not only in the footer) can be harmful to your website. Therefore, it’s best to treat it as a natural website element, not an extra SEO tool.

It’s also not the best idea to develop a footer that’s bigger than other website elements. Moderation is a key to success – provide only the most important elements. There are a number of exemplary footers and their templates, however, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to make use of everything.

Website footer and its impact on SEO

There are different views concerning this issue, however, most people agree that a website footer has a slight impact on the SEO process. Website footer links have much less power than those placed in the header or text. On the other hand, too many anchors and links can negatively affect SEO.

A footer can encourage users who browsed one site to visit another one which helps to decrease the bounce rate and increases time spent on the page that can be helpful in improving Google positions.

Therefore, the footer needs to be functional. A user who goes through the whole page and reaches the footer is a potentially interested customer. Don’t ruin that by creating a footer that isn’t transparent and contains too many elements. Choose items that are the most important for your business and meet customers’ expectations.

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Comments (2)

Liz says:

March 30, 2021 at 14:13

Wow, so many info I have to add to my footer! Thanks for that 🙂

Reply
Ula says:

April 2, 2021 at 11:39

Great to hear that! There’s always room for improvements when it comes to SEO 🙂 Remember that you don’t need to include all the elements we mentioned in the article – just choose what’s right for your website!

Reply