0

I am using tags for my posts on my WordPress site. The content of my post is set in <article> tags, which is fine and now, I want to put the author link and tags in a <footer> tag, but I don't know if this is good for SEO reasons.

I know that Googlebots are putting less weight if they see links in a footer, but will this effect my tag pages? Is there any harm?

I would love to read a good explanation on this.

3 Answers 3

1

HTML5 has many benefits and footer being one of those, you can have multiple footers on the page which benefit towards a better semantic page, but in terms of SEO it holds little to no value mind.

You could also adapt your design to take advantage of the 'keywords' props that Schema has to offer, for example:

SOURCE: Using Schema.org for blogging: Article VS BlogPosting

<article itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/BlogPosting">
   <header>
        <h1 itemprop="name"><a rel="bookmark" title="Title Description" href="#">Article Header</a></h1>
        <dl>
            <dt>Publish Date:</dt>
            <dd><time itemprop="datePublished">2013-01-25</time></dd>
            <dt>Authors:</dt>
            <dd><a rel="author" href="#">Author Name</a></dd>
        </dl>
    </header>  

    <div class="blog-container">
        <a title="Title Description" class="th" href="#">
            <img width="870" height="400" itemprop="image" alt="Alt Text here" class="post" src="#">
        </a>
        <p itemprop="description">A long but not to long decription</p>
        <a itemprop="url" title="Title Description" href="#" class="creading">Continue Reading</a>
    </div>

    <footer>
        <dl>
            <dt>Filed Under:</dt> 
            <dd itemprop="keywords"><a rel="category" title="Title Description" href="#">Responsive Design</a></dd>
            <dd itemprop="keywords"> <a rel="category" title="View all posts in Website Design" href="#">Website Design</a></dd>
        </dl>
    </footer>

</article>
2
  • Can I use this directly on the site on my posts? For instance, I want to give my article a itemprop.. Should I do anything else to implement it correctly?
    – BlackEagle
    Jul 3, 2013 at 19:36
  • You just use <article itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/BlogPosting"> then in the footer you can use itemprop="keywords on the class that your using for those tags. Jul 3, 2013 at 20:10
0

Yes, that is a good approach in terms of semantics, and is exactly what the footer is for. Given the tags are related to the article then you would have the footer tag inside it like so:

<article>
  <p>Your article content
  <p>...
  <footer>The tags etc</footer>
</article>

HTML5 Doctor has more information on the footer element.

As for SEO, it wouldn't cause any harm. I've searched around and found nothing but speculation and guesses saying "Google could potentially reduce the ranking weight of the footer tag". But there is no evidence. (Even if Google were to do that, the result would be pretty small.)

2
  • @BlackEagle You could also use schema markup for keywords in conjuction with HTML5. Jul 3, 2013 at 12:38
  • I'll add it as an additional answer on this page. Jul 3, 2013 at 12:39
0

Surely the purpose of this would be to aid crawlability to your most popular post tags and ease of use for visitors to explore these categories?

There is no "SEO" value in listing your tags in your footer and minimal link weight will be passed via these links to your tag pages - this, subsequently have no minimal effect on the performance of these pages in search (positive or otherwise).

Whilst there would not be any direct ranking influence, there are many 'knock-on' effects with rankings such as the easier pages of your site can be found that serve great value to your visitors that they engage well with (as an example).

Edit: The original question has been edited since I posted my answer making my answer sound pretty irrelevant to the question or more-so, the question was pretty unclear in the first place.

2
  • There is no text added or changed, so I don't know why you are saying that the question was unclear in the first place. If it is unclear, it should be now too :) Anyway, thanks for the answer.
    – BlackEagle
    Jul 3, 2013 at 12:31
  • No problem :) No, I think it was edited by @Zistoloen to wrap articles and footer in tags (<>).
    – zigojacko
    Jul 3, 2013 at 13:14

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge that you have read and understand our privacy policy and code of conduct.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.