# Footer links

Category: [On-Page & Content](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/category/on-page-content/) › [Internal linking, structure & UX](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/category/on-page-content/internal-linking-structure-ux/) · Also known as: sitewide links

**Footer links** are links in the footer of a website. Because the footer repeats on every page, these links appear sitewide on every URL. Typical entries are legal pages, contact and links to main sections.

## What do footer links mean for SEO?

Google can crawl a link when it is an `<a>` element with an `href` attribute, and every page you care about should be linked from at least one other page. Footer links meet that condition technically. They do not replace links inside the content that explain how pages relate (assessment).

Google's spam policies list "widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites" as link spam. This describes links spread across many different sites, such as credit links in themes with keyword anchor text. A site's own footer navigation is not what that example describes (assessment).

## Example

```html
<footer>
  <nav aria-label="Footer">
    <a href="/privacy/">Privacy</a>
    <a href="/contact/">Contact</a>
  </nav>
</footer>
```

## Common mistakes

Links that only work through a JavaScript click handler cannot be reliably parsed by Google, according to its documentation. Long lists of keyword-rich anchors are widely seen as a warning sign (assessment).

## Related terms

- [Internal linking](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/internal-linking/index.md)
- [Anchor text](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/anchor-text/index.md)
- [Link spam](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/link-spam/index.md)
- [nofollow](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/nofollow/index.md)
- [Crawlable links](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/crawlable-links/index.md)

## Sources

- [Link best practices for Google – Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/links-crawlable)
- [Spam policies for Google web search – Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies)
- [Website footers – Nielsen Norman Group](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/footers/)
- [Sitewide links – Search Engine Journal (secondary)](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ranking-factors/sitewide-links/)

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Last updated: October 7, 2026
URL: https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/footer-links/