Adding custom sitemap in the footer, is one of the best ways to increase the overall crawl-ability and visibility of the website in the eye of search engines?

Usually, WordPress Footer uses to place some of the most important pages of your website in front of your users like Privacy Policy, Term & Condition, and Disclaimer Page, etc.

Footer

As we know, every bot first land on Header as well as on WordPress footer to check the rule to crawl your set by you using robots.txt file then move next.

So why we do not place a link to XML Sitemap or Custom sitemap in the footer of WordPress to increase the overall visibility of our content as well as the site.

WordPress Footer can be divided into three main parts;

1. Bottom Bar:  Where you add the footer credit like “Copyright ©2016-2017 HiTechWork, All rights reserved.”
2. Footer Menu:  Wher you place the important page of your sites like “Privacy Policy, Term, and Condition and Disclaimer Page.”
3. Footer: Here you can place anything you want like “Company Detail, Contact Us, About Page, Social Links, etc.”.

But these options are varied from theme to theme and plugins you are using on your site.

Look at the WordPress default theme twenty-sixteen.

the footer of twenty sixteen theme

This theme has Bottom Bar and Footer to place footer credit and an important link to your site respectively.

Note:  Each theme has the limited number of a Footer. Maybe it gives you one or more than one footer.

To Check the number of WordPress footers click one Appereance>> Widgets.

number of the footer in theme

In this article, we will learn how to add Text and Sitemap in the footer of the WordPress website.

This basic thing help you to find the answer to some of the fundamental questions that beginner blogger have like

1. How to add privacy policy page to WordPress footer?
2. How to add Menu in the footer?
3. How to Inserting hyperlinks to WordPress footer.
4. How to add Social link or Icon in the footer…. etc

So, let start,

Introduction To Custom Sitemap For Footer

The primary purpose of the adding Custom Sitemap Footer in WordPress is to help the visitors to find the valuable piece of content and information quickly.

Now, In modern days, company use footer space very cleverly to increase the usability of their site.

Look at Google developer website,

How they cleverly use their Footer Space to guide their user to reach out all the relevant page on the site with going puzzle on their website.

Google Footer Sitemap

To understand the importance of footer we first have to study, the journey of the user on a website.

A visitor visits a website…but he/she doesn’t see what she’s looking for,,, He/she scrolls down a bit… but he/she still doesn’t find,,,,,, scrolls a bit more,,,,,,still not the,,,,,  then he/she goes all the way down to the bottom of the page,,,,,, and there it is, in the website footer. The link he/she was looking for!

So ignoring the importance of footer means you are neglecting your audience attention.

Traditional Vs Mini Sitemap

Both these sitemaps are used to place an essential link in the footer. Where Traditional footer contains a short line of administrative links, Privacy policy, and Copyright information.

However, on another hand Mini Sitemap are used to place whatever you want to put in an attractive and user engaging way.

Traditional vs Mini sitemap

Mini Sitemap footers are not only gaining the more click, user attraction but also more efficient than traditional footers.

As I told you, Whenever user not able to find the information in the header as well as in the sidebar. They try it to see in the footer,

So footer is your last option, to grab the of the user attention to decrease the bounce rate of your website.

How To Add Sitemap In The Footer Of WordPress?

To add anything to the WordPress footer, Side Bar as well as on the in the header of your website. You should have to learn the two essential feature of WordPress.

• WordPress Menu and
• WordPress Widgets.

Note: Here I’m just giving an overview of Menu as well as Widgets, but in an upcoming tutorial, we will cover this in detail.

Let me give you an overview, what I’m going to do in this paragraph.

First, I will create the Menu (group) and add some page to it.  After that, I will use the Widgets to place that Custom Menu (a group of a page ) into the WordPress Footer.

This is the process to place text, social link, hyperlink, sitemap in the footer. So, Lets we do this.

• Login Your website as an Admin and open your WordPress Dashboard.
• Click on Menus Under Appearance, and here, you will see a window like below.

Menu Option

Note: – Don’t worry if you see a different window. This depends on the theme you are using, but the procedure remains same in all the theme.

• Just click on create a new Menu in WordPress and give a name to it.

Create New Menu

Now you have a Menu, Add whatever you want to add to it. For example, here I’m adding my “About page and Sitemap Page” in it.

• Select the page that you want to add in the Menu, and Hit Add to Menu Button.

Create New Menu

• Now you will see, Your selected page is moved in the Menu.

So, now you know how to create a group of the page in the WordPress Menu. So, lets we move to our topic “how to add sitemap in the footer.

• Click on Widgets Under Appearance.

Footer In theme

On your left side, you will find a list of Widgets and right side you will see the place where you can add your widgets.

So, Click on Custom Menu Widgets and select the place( footer 1, 2 or 3) and click on Add Widgets.

Note:  WordPress has a Drag and Drop functionality, So you can also drag Custom menu from left side to right side in the footer.

• Now, select the Menu you just created and give the Title which you want to show on your site and hit the save button.

Adding Custom Menu In footer

Check your website footer.

I’m sure you will definitely see something in your footer.

Sitemap In footer

In this way, You can add text, sitemap in the footer of the WordPress website.

But inserting hyperlinks to WordPress footer is little different than adding sitemap in the footer of WordPress.

How To Inserting Hyperlinks To WordPress Footer

You can do inserting hyperlinks with the help Custom link option in the Menu under Appearance.

• Click on Appearance>>Menu and then click on Custom link.

Custom Link

Here you will see two option.

1.  URL: where you want to link the text and
2. Text Name: Text to show on the front end (like title)

Entry the URL as well as text and click on Add to Menu button,

Note: Try to create a New Menu for Inserting hyperlinks. If you add in the old Menu then it will show where you added the menu. So it is better to create a new menu rather than using old menu.

In this way, you can add a hyperlink in the WordPress footer as you add the sitemap.

How To Create a Sitemap For WordPress Footer

The Sitemap file, Which we place in the footer is totally different from XML sitemap file that we submit in the webmaster tool.

The XML sitemap is a file that contains your article detail for Search engine Bots. But the Sitemap that we use to place in the footer consists of the link to all the article of your site.

WordPress Page is best to do this job. You can learn the difference between post and page in WordPress to increase your information about WordPress.

• Create a New Page with name “Sitemap.”
• Make a list of your all article and wrap them in a link.

Creating Footer Sitemap

Here I’m building a custom sitemap for my category.So, In this way, we create and add Sitemap in the footer WordPress.

Note: – Update your footer sitemap time to time (When you update a new post by placing the link in the sitemap)

A sitemap in the footer is work only when bots come to your site. To get faster indexing of your content combines sitemap with WordPress ping list to get a better result.

Customize The Footer In WordPress

Some themes give you the ability to Customize the footer like change the Color, Size, Font by Click on Appearance>>Customize.

If your theme supports these feature, you will see Footer option in the customizer.

customization setting

• Click on Footer and select Footer Menu.

Here You will see all the Customization option available for you to edit the footer.

footer customizer

Set the font size, font family, and color according to your theme setting.

Things That Can Do In Footers

Here are an idea, the things that you can add to the footer of any website.

• Major content categories.
• Copyright, Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, Contact.
• Sitemap, Navigation, Testimonials.
• Phone and Fax numbers.
• Site Search Tool, Your Mission, Branding.
• Social Icons, Social Media Widgets.
• Help and support, Contact information, Current promotions
• Donation or volunteer information, for nonprofits
• Information about the site or organization
• Awards and Certifications, Association Memberships.

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Harvinder Singh Sharry

owner at Hitechwork

I'm Professional Blogger, SEO, and Digital marketing expert. I started my blog in 2016 with the aim to share my knowledge and experiences for the people associated with my field as well as for the general public.

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