About Us in the Footer

[EcomLkwd]

For our new site we created a simple navigational footer. The development team wants to put a short "About Us" paragraph with relevant links to our products or services.

I know putting footer links for the search engines is a big no-no, but is this different because it's meant for the users convenience?

This is an image of our unfinished footer: https://www.diigo.com/item/image/3vpdp/jihw Are there any other changes  we should implement?

Thanks!

[CleverPhD]

If the links are relevant to users to navigate the site, how is that any different than the other links you show there in the footer?

I think your concern stems from when someone buys a link on another site and it is put in the footer across the site.  That is a different situation and generally a no-no.  That has to do with external links.

[EcomLkwd]

Thanks for responding.

The other links in the footer are not in the main navigation bar on our site (Terms of service, wholesalers, about us...). But the links that we will be putting into the about us paragraph are for specific best selling products we want our users to buy that are part of our main navigation funnel.

Take a look at this site: http://www.brickhousesecurity.com/ it's a very nice site but the paragraph close to the footer comes across as a bit spammy. This is something the development team is interested in. Is this considered going against best practices?

[AWCthreads]

Hi Rachel,

The "Did You Know" paragraph does not appear to be in the footer.

I clicked on a category and a couple of products and the content is not there, so it is not run-of-site.

The footer will appear on every page of a site.

I don't have a problem at all with the "Did You Know" paragraph on the homepage.

[EcomLkwd]

Even though it's there for linking purposes only?

[AWCthreads]

Yes.

It's the first thing I read on the page that tells me what they do.

I could have gone to an "About Us" page, "Our Mission" or "Our Guarantee" page and got the same/similar or something less informative.

In the process, they're also sending their homepage authority to pages they value.

The link to the sitemap is the least helpful link in that paragraph.

[ReferralCandy]

Hi Rachel,

If you're planning to put an About Us description with relevant links, with the aim of driving visitors to your product pages, I would recommend you putting it somewhere above the fold instead of putting it in the footer. The footer is the last thing the user will see when visiting your website, and is probably a better place to put links which are less important.

An exception to this I can think of is if you are running a blog where the latest posts play a more important role. In that case, putting an About Us description in the footer (e.g. Copyblogger) will be wise.