Footers... Good or Bad?

[HCGDiet]

I know in the past footers have been seen as a bad idea. I need to get up to date. Does having footer links that point to your own site with anchor texts keywords create problems? or is it safe to have?

Will it do anything to our google rankings? Is it going to penalize us? As well, how many is acceptable, do I want all 77 links or have 15 with sub-categories?

[RyanKent]

Hi Justin.

Footer links are read last as web crawlers read your page. Anchor text is associated with the first link that is found on a given page. This is important to know as links are often found in your navigation bar, side bars and content so the anchor text in the footer does not get applied.

Footer links are also devalued from a SEO point of view. They do not have the same weight as other links on the page. Search engines understand footer links are the least visible and least used links on a page. You should review some analytics to determine if any of your footer links are actually used.

It can be useful to offer a handful of footer links. Stuffing 30+ links in your footer is not helpful for SEO nor your users. Take a look at the SEOmoz footer links for a reasonable example.

In summary, you are not penalized for having many footer links unless they get to the point where they appear spammy. But you are algorithmically disadvantaged by adding any unnecessary links as you are taking away PR from flowing to the more important links on your site.