What Should be Placed in a Site Footer?

The site footer has been known for being a rather dull area for a number of reasons – some reasons that shouldn’t necessarily be there. In blogs, it can be difficult to say what you should include in the footer, especially if you are trying to draw more focus onto your content and any products that you may be selling. The footer, in this case, promotes your readers to travel out of your blog unless you are able to decide what to place and where.

While each blog may be different, in this day and age, we all need to consider the “social sharing” aspect of blogs. Two years ago, it wasn’t nearly as popular as it is today, but more and more people are sharing Twitter usernames, following one another, and reciprocating what they enjoy on the web.

In the image above, you can see some great examples of footers, both in terms of the content chosen and the visual design.

Sites include: CSS-Tricks, StrawPoll, Bits & Pixels, Volll, and CSS Beauty.

News-Related Blogs

Because news blogs often focus on driving the most traffic to their top stories, you’ll find that there is less information in the footers. News should be placed in the header or closer to the top of the site, possibly in the sidebar.

News sites don’t focus on “sharing” as much as regular blogs, although they may place a small Twitter stream in the sidebar. The footer is usually used for links to their main areas, such as U.S., Politics, World, Entertainment, Tech, Travel, etc. They want to keep the traffic on the site, without driving traffic away because the visitors already know the news.

Value-Driven Blogs

Writers who regularly publish posts that are more than a thousand words in length and may not be posted as frequently as a news-related blog, per se, should be focusing on driving visitors to specific articles. This is even more important if you only have a few few articles (between three and five) on the main page, driving focus to recent topics covered.

Information about your site, copyright information, latest posts/calls to action, and possibly a Twitter stream should be placed in the footer.

One-level (in respect to the rows) footers are typically harder to organize, as you may be torn over placing contact and personal information here, rather than content from your blog. While the upper portion of the sidebar is often reserved for advertisements, the sidebar for value and service-driven blogs often focus on driving visitors to an area where they can discover how to obtain your services or products.

In General

While I wanted to focus on the two main types of blogs above, there are thousands of other categories of blogs, specifically those in niches. Many fit into the categories above, but vary by how the publisher wants to organize content.

Consider the following types of content when creating your footer and juggling content between your footer and sidebar.

• About Information – Personal blogs are already able to focus on the personal sense with information placed on a dedicated page or at the top of the main page, although it may also be important to place information about your site here.
• Lifestream Information – We’ve seen how powerful social media sites have become in promoting content. Why not use them while promoting your name in your footer with links to or a stream of your latest tweets?
• Contact Information – This information may be necessary if you invite people to input their opinion or share additional links.
• Pages – Links to your pages can improve navigation and can yield some more SEO benefits as you are pointing more links to your internal pages.
• A Blogroll – Your blogroll can help your readers become more familiar with other sites and also help if you don’t necessarily have “enough” to place in your footer.
• Recent Comments or Posts – Focusing on a more minimalistic approach, placing links to recent posts can help if you only place one or two articles on your main page.
• Advertisements – Even though it isn’t the most desirable for your readers, placing additional ads in the footer can increase the space that you have for advertisers.

Getting to the Basics

The footer is not meant to be overused, but it is often underused. It is a great place to expand upon, especially if you have a difficult time fitting everything in your sidebar. Three-column footers balance out most designs, while one-column footers don’t really add as much value, due to how the content is organized. The best advice is to browse through sites and see what really works.