Footer Content
-
We currently have footer content contained in a single php include file and is included in every page and contains the following:
-
Most recent 3 tweets from our twitter feed
-
Snippets of our 3 most recent blogs posts
-
navigation links to our main pages (essentially the same as our main navigation in the header)
Is this good/bad?
-
-
Yeah, I also think there is an element in the thought process of "well every other site puts links, newsletters etc in the footer" so why shouldn't we, however reading some other threads on footer links elsewhere it would seem the concensus is "are people actually clicking on the links" in the footer anyway and if not, why have them.
-
No problem Neil - Just focus on the end user and the decisions should be easy to make in regards the footer etc.
I mentioned page load time issues with Twitter because of experience I've had. It's always been 3rd party content which has resulted in site speed issues.
Social media feeds/widgets are just sometimes not worth the issues they can cause.
-
Thanks again Mark, good point about Twitter load times something I had overlooked. I think we just need to more creative about footer elements perhaps, maybe we are over thinking that area of the website!
-
I think you need to look at it from two perspectives.
Is it really needed? Does every page of the site really need this content displayed on it? I would be hesitant about recommending you putting all these things into the footer of every page.
Secondly, Twitter feeds can slow page load time. This will impact on the bounce rate of your site and since site speed can impact ranking, you really gotta ask yourself again about the need for this on every page.
A couple of footer navigational links are fine. Just avoid stuffing the footer with Twitter, newsletter, navigational and blog post links.
-
Thanks for your response Mark, I should have mentioned that the is still in development so not a lot to see. We are having a review of the design and the footer came into question with regards to SEO concerns.
We are thinking now about replacing the footer nav links with a newsletter signup box in that area plus a link to the site's sitemap.
My main point for discussion is really around the repeated elements of the footer such as the tweets and blog snippets.
From your comments are you saying this repeated content should be ok?
-
Can you offer a link to your website Neil so we can see whether the use of links in the footer is excessive?
If the content in the footer can be justified for navigational purposes from Google's perspective, then you should be fine.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What to do with blog content that is no longer relevant to our business
We are a marketing agency and we have LOTS of blog posts still on our website from when we used to specialize in e-commerce services. We've since shifted There are a lot of old and frankly irrelevant blog posts on our website. My questions: Should we remove these from the website so better "shape" our content profile towards the services we actually offer? Should we attempt to update them so they are still relevant even though we don't offer those services? If we get rid of those pages, what should we redirect them to? The main blog page?
On-Page Optimization | | WhittingtonConsulting0 -
Duplicate Content, http vs https
Hi All! I just discovered that a client of ours a duplicate content issue. Essentially they have approximately 20 pages that have an http and an https version. Is there a better way to handle this than a simple 301? Regards, Frank
On-Page Optimization | | FrankSweeney0 -
Stolen Content reposted on other sites. How does this affect ranking?
Visitors often copy and paste my content and post it elsewhere... on Facebook, on Tumblr, on forums and sometimes on competing websites... but they don't link to me. How does Google treat this duplicated content? What is the best way to handle it? File DCMA claims or ask them for a link?
On-Page Optimization | | brianflannery0 -
Latest news in site-wide footer?
I've asked my web team to add a section to our home page to showcase our latest news and content (articles, blog entries (same domain), white papers, case studies, etc.) I think it will be a good user experience and also provide an opportunity to keep a fairly stagnant home page updated with fresh content. My web team wants to add the section to our footer, which is site-wide. I'm sure this isn't a bad user experience, but will it cause problems or eliminate any SEO value (if any) for this regularly updating content?
On-Page Optimization | | mbrusyo0 -
PDF's - Dupe Content
Hi I have some pdfs linked to from a page with little content. Hence thinking best to extract the copy from the pdf and have on-page as body text, and the pdf will still be linked too. Will this count as dupe content ? Or is it best to use a pdf plugin so page opens pdf automatically and hence gives page content that way ? Cheers Dan
On-Page Optimization | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Numbers above actual site content
Most pages on my website contain many numbers above the actual text on the page. This is useful for users and looks good on an actual view of the page. However, when a bot reads the page it appears as rows of numbers with a few sentences at the bottom of the page. Does having these number have a negative SEO effect? If so, should I change them to something such as an image so they aren't readable by search engines?
On-Page Optimization | | theLotter0 -
What about that stuffed footer?
Whether you look at zappos.com, bol.com, or other e-commerce websites you will almost always see a footer that is full of links to categories & subcategories. These elements aren't really attractive, and to be honest, I don't think I ever clicked on one of those links because most of the time I don't reach the bottom of such pages. Why do these companies use these kinds of footers? Is it for SEO purpose,? Are those links passing juice? Aren't those links at the bottom of the page and therefore not that relevant as other links used in paragraphs? Aren't they contributing to too many on-page links? Maybe only use it on homepage? I'm really looking forward to the opinions of the experts here at the forum...
On-Page Optimization | | jbrabants0 -
Duplicate page content errors
Site just crawled and report shows many duplicate pages but doesn't tell me which ones are dups of each other. For you experienced duplicate page experts, do you have a subscription with copyscape and pay $.05 per test? What is the best way to clear these? Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | joemas990