WordPress Footer Section as a Page

[dannanelli]

Hello!

I have a newer client that I am working with. They have a WordPress site and the footer was created as an actual page. Example: website.com/section-footer/. This footer section page is indexed on Google. You can see alot of sites are doing this: site:.com/section-footer/ - Google Search

Each webpage on my client's site includes this footer section. It's inserted at the bottom of each webpage.

When I set /section-footer/ to noindex and then view /section-footer/, I see the noindex directive. When I look at the homepage, I don't see any noindex directives (since the homepage includes the section footer). This leads me to believe that if I noindex /section-footer/ it should not negatively affect the site's SEO. Does anyone have experience with this? Can you think of any other dangers in doing this? Any help would be apprecaited!

Thanks!

 

[Eric Rohrback]

What theme are you using? I can't say i've seen a case where this has happened before. Seems odd that it would create a separate page instead of injecting a template code in the footer.

 

[dannanelli]

It's the Salient Theme: Salient - Responsive Multi-Purpose Theme by ThemeNectar | ThemeForest

 

[Eric Rohrback]

Interesting.... I can't seem to find a good answer on this, but it's built into the theme. Maybe it's part of a visual builder or something like that? What did the theme developers say about it?

This seems weird that a theme would do this. Looks like Nifty Law did a lot of work with this theme, I wonder if they ran into any issues with it. Looks like most of those footer sections are not using the noindex directive. Idk if I would use noindex for a major piece of the site like that because Google said they would stop following links after a substantial amount of time on noindexed pages...

I'll have to keep digging into this. It's odd.

 

[Kostas Nicolacopoulos]

It's weird how this theme uses a page as a footer.

I see no issue setting the /section-footer/ page to noindex. This way the page itself won't get indexed but the content of the page will be indexed as part of every other page on the site.

Since you don't want to visitors visiting that page either, I would go one step further and redirect /section-footer/ to the homepage.

It reminds me an older method used in WordPress themes to create single-page (multi-section) homepages. We created a page for each section of the homepage and pulled the content for each in the homepage template. Then we redirected the page url to the corresponding section on the homepage. ie site.com/about-us/ to site.com#about-us etc.

EDIT: Also if you make sure the /section-footer/ page doesn't appear in the sitemap and since it won't be linked from any other page, Google most likely won't even pick it up.

 

[dannanelli]

Hi Eric, thanks for your thoughts. I have attempted to contact the developer two times, but they have yet to reply. Since the theme was purchased by a previous Agency, I don't have the purchase information required to create a help ticket with the developer.

 

[Eric Rohrback]

possible to get another license for the site in the client's name? A license is only $39, and as long as a child theme was used for any customizations, then you should be fine with switching it out for the same theme with a working license.

 

[dannanelli]

Ok, thanks. I'll take a look.