Does keyword usage in the footer have an effect on how high a page ranks?
-
My client has a lot of text about their company in their footer. Is the text in the footer associated with the on page keyword usage and density for all pages or none of the pages?
-
Probably a safe way to go - even with images comprised mainly of images I'd be surprised if you saw a negative impact from the footer blurb, but I've been surprised before.
To clarify: yes it's a good idea to mention your target phrase a few times, outside of your Title and H1 tags, in as organic a manner as possible. However, the "keyword density" most people discuss is related to calculating some percentage, attempting to determine the "optimal" density of the keyword phrase related to other copy. This is the "waste of time" I was talking about - sorry for the lack of clarity there.
-
Thanks Mike and Charles. I actually am concerned about the duplicate content issue because the site is mostly images and not a lot of text, so I decided to convert the text in the footer into an image on all pages but the homepage.
I'm surprised that keyword density doesn't matter at all. In the on page optimization here at SEO Moz they still recommend using your keyword phase at least 4 times.
-
- I would not expect the footer text to hurt on-page SEO. "Duplicate content" does not mean any repeated content whatsoever across your pages. This flag only goes up for Google's filtration purposes when the vast majority of content on the page is duplicate to another page.
There are countless sites across the web with similar "template" content that occurs across all pages, and this does not impede them from ranking or draw any filters/penalties against them.
-
Keyword density is not worth focusing on. It can safely be dropped from your SEO work at this point.
-
I'd look at this from a usability standpoint. If you have reason (data) to believe the footer content is being read by users and therefor actually serving a purpose, I'd recommend leaving it as-is. If nobody is reading this content, or it simply clutters the page unnecessarily, it's a good idea to remove it in favor of a more straightforward user experience.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Inserting Keywords in Web Pages
Hello! Question: When I add chosen keywords to my site (in urls, title tags, meta description, page content, headers, etc), do I need to put the words on my webpage exactly as they appear in my keyword research? So if I searched "therapist bay area" and I want to include these keywords, for example, must I use those words in that order in a sentence or header on my homepage? Or is it enough to include each word somewhere on the page?
On-Page Optimization | | LPantell0 -
Should I optimize my home-page or a sub-page for my most important keyword
Quick question: When choosing the most important keyword set that I would like to rank for, would I be better off optimizing my homepage, or a sub page for this keyword. My thinking goes as follows: The homepage (IE www.mysite.com) naturally has more backlinks and thus a better Google Page Rank. However, there are certain things I could do to a subpage (IE www.mysite.com/green-widgets-los-angeles ) that I wouldn't want to do to the homepage, which might be more "optimal" overall. Option C, I suppose, would be to optimize both the homepage, and a single sub-page, which is seeming like a pretty good solution, but I have been told that having multiple pages optimized for the same keywords might "confuse" search engines. Would love any insight on this!
On-Page Optimization | | Jacob_A2 -
Are there any SEO benefits changing the default home page filename (index.htm) to a keyword rich filename
II'm a newbie. I have a website using the default home page filename: index.htm. I have total control over the web server. I was wondering whether I can get any SEO improvements for my main keyword if I change the default filename with a filename that contains the main keyword, like our-main-product.htm (doing the 301 redirect and changing the server search order, of course)?
On-Page Optimization | | Grafimart0 -
On Page Reports - Multiple URLs Appearing for a Keyword
Hello, I have a question regarding the on page reports automatically generated by seomoz When I look at my on page reports I notice that each keyword appears a number of times, each with a different url and then a grade for the on page report and sometimes a rank. I'm not sure I understand this, firstly I thought the on page reports were only generated for keywords in the top 50, does that mean the global top 50, or my top 50? Also why are they appearing for so many urls, I find this confusing and am not sure which pages to focus on improving, it's not always my intended pages that are ranking the best. I believe that I read somewhere that I can choose which pages to have the on page reports rank for, perhaps this is the solution? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks, Iain
On-Page Optimization | | jannkuzel0 -
When Adding content to the site. Should I use the same keyword term on each page or select a secondary keyword to focus on?
I have created a site www.autoinsurancefremontca.com. The index page is SEO for the key term auto insurance fremont ca. I want to add more content on another page of this site. Should I have that page also SEO'd for the same keyword or should I pick another keyword to focus on?
On-Page Optimization | | Greenpeak0 -
Duplicate page
Just getting started and had a question regarding one of the reports. It is telling me that I have duplicate pages but I'm not sure how to resolve that.
On-Page Optimization | | KeylimeSocial0 -
Duplicate Page Content and Duplicate Page Title
Hi All, I'm new in SEOMoz and have some questions after I have already spend 2-3 days trying to resolve the problems identified from Crawling one of my clients websites. I get quite a lot of Duplicate Page Conntent and Page Titles warnings and trying to find a workaround through the forums and posts. I continuously get this error on most of my pages: URL: http://domain.com/benefits with the same Page but with a WWW in front URL: http://www.domain.com/benefits Any advice will be highly appreciated. Thanks, Athos
On-Page Optimization | | athosk0 -
If i only want to rank for one specific keyword and use it in all my page titles, will it negatively affect my rankings?
If i want to rank highest for one specific keyword (virtualization management, for example) and use that keyword in all the titles on my website, will that negatively affect my search rankings? SEOmoz is telling me that i should use unique titles for my different pages to ensure that they describe each page uniquely and don't compete with each other for keyword relevance.
On-Page Optimization | | foonista0