Key phrases in the footer - do they really help with SEO?

[Ashley_Price]

As I have been sending letters to solicitors practices recently, I've been getting the details from their websites, and I've noticed some seem to have a long list in the footer of "solicitors in..." and then the name of all nearby towns, e.g.

Solicitors in Brighton
Solicitors in Eastbourne
Solicitors in Newhaven...

I assume they are doing this in the hope of capturing someone who has typed one of those into Google, but does it really work?

 

[BigPhill]

The general answer is "no" because footer links often get devalued and carry less weight than the primary navigation or links in the content of the page....

Around three years ago, Google said that you should put a "nofollow" tag on any site-wide footer links, if you have them at all. Google's stance at the time was they're "unnatural"

However depending on the niche, it *does* still work for some websites, rightly or wrongly.....

The last company I worked for has 60+ site-wide footer-links... and they rank top 3 for a lot of keywords...... IMO as I worked on this website daily, it ranks well because of its age, content and size, rather than the footer-links, but equally its had no "penalties" either.

As is with SEO, there are too many variables to say that there is a definitive "yes" or "no".

 

[justinaldridge]

Are they links or just text in the footer?

Anything in the footer generally has less value than elements further up the page but there is still some value....

 

[StevePoster]

Obviously the solicitors keyword phrases in different nearby towns is trying to rank but unfortunately it will not work for Google because they do not rely on keywords in understanding the site pages content.

 

[zigojacko]

Pointless unless they serve value to your visitors.

There was a Google algorithm update towards the end of December (Maccabees) that seemed to affect lots of websites that did this sort of thing (keyword permutations).

 

[Killua7]

If they are just text, they won't help any with SEO. But if they are links, in my opinion, they still help a little

 

[AnotherSEOGuy]

Nope, maybe in your nav, but even then, that's just basic internal linking and you're linking to rather redundant pages.

You'd be better off creating separate landing pages and ranking those, be different and make those landing pages really immersive into the local area, imagery n'all.