How To Use Footer Links for SEO & Best Practices
Footer links are important for SEO because they are associated with several ranking factors. This includes PageRank, relevance, and user behavior signals.
Here are the Footer Links SEO best practices for search engine optimization:
Purpose of Footer Links
Google’s PageRank algorithm scores a document (webpage) by the quantity and quality of links pointing it. The purpose of footer links are to increase the amount of links pointing to another page, which can positively impact keyword rankings.
This applies to both types of links:
- Internal links – these are links from your website to other pages on your site
- External links – these are links from another website that link to your site
Footer links can be external or internal links and are considered “site-wide” links, meaning that they appear on every page due to being placed in a website’s footer.
Whether internal or external, footer links pass PageRank (also called “link juice”).
However, as a result of being site-wide links, the PageRank algorithm “normalizes” or consolidates these links, which limits their ability to pass PageRank.
Pro Tip: Footer links can be used for SEO to increase relevancy signals, and also to improve quality signals by helping users to better navigate a website which can help reduce bounce rate.
BUT they can still boost rankings.
Here’s how…
Types of Footer Links
Most websites use a mix of internal and external footer links.
Common Types of Internal Footer Links
Most commonly, websites use internal links in the footer to include links to high priority pages like services pages, product categories, and company info.
- Company Info
- Service Pages
- Product Categories
- Shipping Policies
- Order Tracking
- Contact Info
- Blog Archive
- Recent Posts
- Job Opportunities
- Locations
- Legal
- FAQs
Common Types of External Footer Links
It’s also common for websites to include external footer links to their social media profiles like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. For local businesses, including directions with a link to Google Maps is generally considered to be best practice.
- Directions
- Social Profiles
- Affiliated Sites
- Press Releases
Examples of Footer Links
For local businesses, here’s a good example of how to use footer links…
And here’s a good example of how to use footer links on e-commerce site…
It’s also important to know what’s not recommended, which is using exact match keywords pointing to localized pages…
Whether you have a local business or e-commerce site, footer links can be included in the SEO strategy by linking to high priority, relevant, and useful pages for the user.
Happy SEO-ing 🙂