Introduction : what is a header? And what is a footer? A header and footer are those two tool bars on the top and bottom (respectively) of your website; that is where you list: home, about us etc… Often, the way many websites are designed, the header and footer are either missing (replaced by a menu on the right or left side of the page) or are dynamically generated based on the information that you include on the right/left side bars. Since they are dynamically generated it is difficult for Google to make proper use of them to crawl your page, and therefore you may not be getting the full SEO benefit from this.
The most beneficial way to use a header and footer (in terms of SEO) is to use a simple HTML header and simple HTML footer in order to display links to all of your primary pages, and to make sure that both the header and the footer are displayed on every page. Such a set up is most beneficial for both human visitors, who would find navigation of your site easier and to crawlers who like to use such links to navigate and index all of the pages on your site. To see an example of a website that is using headers and footers properly please take a look at used college textbooks
An important, yet often overlooked part of proper internal linking is having a HTML header and footer on your site. These simple additions to the template of your site can greatly improve your sites’ SEO.
how much header and footer importance in SEO
You have to ask yourself: If you are a website owner, and want to recommend a link to your website audience, where is the best place for your audience to spot it?
Its usually a place "above the fold" (in the header or a link within related content above the fold may be even better than a standalone link in the header).
Importance of footer is lower then header, that's for shore. And lower then content part, too
Those who said that header is more important are right, just do not forget that it is also advisably to mention your keyword at the end of the text in your page as well.
Of course the header is the most important part. There goes the main part of your SEO.
Header is more important because it directly points out what your site is all about. Footer is good when it comes to direct contacts since you'll be putting your contact info.in it..
how to optimize footer for seo
Improving the on page SEO score of your website is important because search engines puts a certain weight on how properly organized a webpage is. Your content has to be good but then, it should also look neat and feel good to the eyes. You can't expect a good user experience on a page which has all the words piled one after another, without any headings or section break.
Using header tags, you can tell users and search engines about the different sections of content and what a particular section is all about. It is important to note that you want to get ranked for the long tail of search and header tags play a very important role, when you are considering ranking for varied keywords on a subject.
Above all, header tags contribute towards good user experience. Remember - What's good for the user is also good for the search engines.
Don't Use CSS or Style Elements for Marking Section Headers
A fundamental mistake most webmasters commit is that they simply increase or decrease the font size of a text using CSS or other style techniques and think that they have correctly implemented the section headers. In fact, this is a completely wrong way and you should abide by the following HTML markup for headers
<h1> Your Main Heading Of The Page Goes Here</h1>
<h2> This is the second Header tag which should come after the h1 tag in the HTML source</h2>
<h3> This is the third Header tag which should come after the h2 tag in the HTML source</h3>
You just cant increase the font size of a sentence and say "Hey, this is a header tag". You have to use the above markup or search engines won't consider that phrase to be a section break or the headline of a different section on the same given page.
Follow the Hierarchical Structure
This is not a hard and fast rule but it is strongly advised that you maintain the following hierarchical structure of header tags within any page of your site
Do not use multiple H1 tags on a page. It won't hurt but on rare occasions, search engines might consider this as an act of keyword spamming. Besides that, it won't look good to human eyes either.
Multiple H2,H3 and H4 tags on a page are allowed and considered a proper practice.
Never overdo. Do not add a whole bunch of header tags on a page thinking that it might improve the on page seo score.
Follow the hierarchical structure. If you want to use three H3 tags, be sure to include them within an H2 tag first. Like I said, it won't hurt if you skip the H2 completely and use all H3's but it is a good practice to maintain the seniority level of each header tag and include the juniors in nested levels.
The Structure of Your Website's Homepage
If your website is a blog and you're showing a list of recent posts on the front page, I would use all H2's for post titles and won't use the H1 tag at all. My explanation here is that more than one H1 tag in any page might look bad for users who have turned off CSS in their browsers.
If your website is not a blog and it has fewer sections (3-4), it perfectly makes sense to use the H1 tag for your main tagline. The H1 tag has more weight than H2's, so it definitely makes sense to use an H1 tag to describe what your website is all about.
On the other hand, if you use 15-20 H1's on the homepage of a blog, guess what happens. The value of each H1 is diluted to a great level as search engines see a group of H1 tags which are not very closely related. Hence the usage of H2 tags on the homepage for post titles.
The Structure of Your Website's Article Pages, Single Post pages
The single post pages or article pages on your site have a clear focus.
Hence, always use an H1 for the main heading and use H2's for sub headings. You can multiple H2 tags for different sections of the content and at the same time use H3 tags for further organization. Limit until H3 because H4, H5 and H6 tags do not have much weight as far as SEO is concerned. On my websites, I never use H4, H5 and H6 tags within the content section, these tags are reserved for labelling sidebar content, widgets and so on.
how to optimize footer for seo
Integrate graphically: Do not parachute in the bottom of your site. Do you have no shame! The footer should also be made ?readable ?to the visitor and not only for the search engine.
Do not hide your footer via any of the content masking techniques (the hidden content is wrong)
The footer can be different on each page (or partially different). The organization of the content is quite effective.
The footer theoretically, should be the largest of the page that has the most popular content (most often the home page)
Ideally, the footer will contain text and links, i.e. links within text
If the footer contains only links in a list / column, arrange them by topic
Your link columns need not be at the bottom of your site. If you add text below, Google may feel that your columns are part of your content
Make your links to the most important pages of your site (product families, products star, landing page etc) or to those you want to highlight
Do not keep too many links. There is really no limit but it is better not abuse it. The number of links is to test / set based on the popularity of the page. See the screenshots of Microsoft and Apple’s homepage. They are simplistic, yet informative.
Ties with corporates can / should be placed below because they are not interesting pages for SEO
Footer Example :
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