Footers get treated as a dumping ground for whatever did not fit elsewhere. They are also one of the most reliably scrolled-to areas of any page, and they carry real weight for trust and navigation.
A footer should carry your contact details, key navigation, legal pages, social profiles and a copyright line. For local businesses it should also carry your full address in a format that matches your Google Business Profile exactly. It is the natural home for anything important that does not earn a place in the main navigation.
Why footers matter more than expected
People who reach the footer are often looking for something specific: an address, a phone number, opening hours, or confirmation that you are a real business.
It is also where you can carry links to secondary pages without cluttering the header, and where consistent contact details reinforce your local search signals.
What to include
- Contact details. Phone, email and address, tappable on mobile.
- Full address for local businesses, formatted exactly as it appears on your Google Business Profile.
- Key navigation. Services, and the pages that did not fit the header.
- Legal pages. Privacy policy, terms, cookie information.
- Social profiles, which also support your entity through sameAs markup.
- Copyright line with the current year, updated automatically rather than manually.
- Company registration details where legally required in your jurisdiction.
What to leave out
| Avoid | Why |
|---|---|
| Every page on the site | A wall of links that nobody reads and that dilutes internal linking |
| A second full navigation | Duplicates the header without adding anything |
| Keyword-stuffed location lists | Reads as spam and has been penalised for years |
| An email signup nobody wanted | Fine if relevant, poor as an afterthought |
| A hardcoded year | Guaranteed to be wrong every January |
Consistency matters for local search
Your name, address and phone number should be identical everywhere: your website footer, your Google Business Profile, and any directory listing. Not similar, identical.
Inconsistent details across sources weaken local ranking signals, and the footer is the version search engines see on every page of your site.
Accessibility
- Footer links need the same contrast as body text. Pale grey on dark is a very common failure.
- Keep them large enough to tap on mobile, with spacing between.
- Use a semantic footer element so screen readers announce it correctly.
- Make sure keyboard users can reach every link, with a visible focus state.
Frequently asked questions
What should be in a website footer?
Contact details, key navigation, legal pages, social profiles and a copyright line. Local businesses should also include their full address exactly as it appears on their Google Business Profile.
Do footer links help SEO?
Modestly. They help crawlers reach pages and they distribute a little authority, though body content links carry more weight. What genuinely helps is consistent contact details, which reinforce local search signals on every page.
Should I put all my pages in the footer?
No. A giant link list dilutes the value of each link and nobody reads it. Include the pages that matter and did not fit the header. Sitewide link dumps look like an attempt to game internal linking.
Is a fat footer good or bad?
Neither inherently. A structured footer with three or four clear columns works well for larger sites. What fails is an unstructured wall of dozens of links with no grouping.
Should the copyright year update automatically?
Yes. A single line of script or a server-side date avoids a footer that says 2024 in the middle of 2026, which is a small detail that visitors read as an abandoned site.