If I have multiple locations for a company, is a location specific footer necessary?

[HotCoffeyDesign]

For example, the company has 4 locations. As of right now, all of the locations are listed in the footer- which I know is bad for SEO. How do you inform going about this in the right, smart SEO way?

[KevinBudzynski]

I don't see any issue with placing 4 locations neatly in footer. It gives you some added credibility and it's where visitor's expect to find it--so good usability.  Also, use schema.

[Eric_Rohrback]

It's not necessarily bad for SEO, and in fact could be useful to the user. What you need to do is make sure you're marking them all up in schema.org markup to make sure the bots can understand the information a little easier. The best scenario is to create a landing page for each location - that way you can have a better shot at ranking for each market.

Write unique copy, add a map (embed a Google Map), make sure you have complete contact information (name, address, phone, hours of operation, etc), and list unique products/services for each location.