What is the best Practice for Adding Social Buttons to your Sites from SEO Perspective?
-
Hey Guys,
As you all know there are many social buttons out there that can be added to your website. Facebook Like button, Twitter's Tweet and Follow buttons, Google +1, and AddThis buttons are just a few to mention.
All of these buttons can be customized, eg. you may choose to point your FB Like button to your homepage, to a specific inner page, or to your Facebook Brand Page. Same with your +1 button. Moreover, you may choose to add Twitter and Google+ Follow buttons to your site's pages, and so on.
My questions are very simple:
Is there any best practice for adding social buttons to your site from SEO perspective? if yes,
Which social buttons to add?
Where is the ideal place for them on your page?
Where these buttons should be pointing to? your homepage? specific inner page? or to your official brand pages?
Thanks in Advance,
Yogev.
-
Thanks James! Great tutorial. I'm going to test this box on one of our sites.
-
Though I'm not aware of any technical impact from where or how you choose to place social buttons, I've found the greatest share rates to be when you prompt the user with a call-to-action at the end of a piece of content. The best way to do this is with a box that slides in somewhere non-intrusively at the end of the article (if that's the content we're referring to here). There's a great tutorial for this here.
-
Thanks Eugene for your great advise. Would you add the social buttons to your Thank You Pages?
-
Thank you very much for your detailed answer. It's very helpful.
I agree, there is no substitute for high quality content, and you always have to fit your social activity to your target audience.
However, when all things being equal - assuming you already have a great content and your content fits your customers - you still have to choose which social buttons will generate you the most SEO value. If Google +1s have more SEO value than FB likes, you may decide to place the +1 button first, make it bigger, etc.
Do you know by any chance if there is such hierarchy between the social buttons from SEO perspective? Are FB shares more valuable than FB likes, or perhaps tweets and +1s are the most valuable ones? Which social buttons are most likely to increase your ranking on Google and other SEs?
Cheers,
Y.
-
Present the buttons to your visitor at the point in time your visitor is most likely to want to follow you. (We called this the "point of maximum like")
For most ecommerce sites, this is not before they make the purchase. Don't distract them with social stuff when your focus should be on converting them to a purchase. Give them an option at the end of the checkout or in a follow up email. We increased social shares and follows doing this by such a large percentage that made our previous efforts (share buttons on all pages) seem insignificant.
-
Adding them to your page with no applicable content on the social networks provides no value. Like a ferrari without gas.
Before you work through the exercise ask yourself, are your customers or clients going to really utilize them on your site. Are they going to click on them? I see so many companies that put them in a high profile position and they get no activity. WASTE OF VALUABLE SPACE. If they aren' being used on your site but they do create alot of online activity from the social network,s get them connected to the home page in a lower profile position (footer) so you get the link juice value but you don't take up valuable space....
Doesn't matter where the buttons are on your page for SEO.
Add whatever social buttons you have that have activity and fit your customers, clients or vendors profiles....on the business to business side, our linked in activity has been very valuable. On our consumer side, facebook and twitter have been very valuable.
Home page pointing always makes the most sense for general seo. But if you have a special offer or something specific that you are trying to generate value or action, then move them to a specific URL landing page to optimize that value or action.
Hope this helps....cheers.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can someone clear up social signals as a ranking factor?
I'm aware that Google have addressed this before and specifically said that social signals are not a ranking factor: http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2325343/matt-cutts-facebook-twitter-social-signals-not-part-of-google-search-ranking-algorithms However I came across this (admittedly great) infographic from Neil Patel, an SEO I have a lot of respect for: http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/01/31/how-social-signals-impact-search-engine-rankings/ In the post he specifically states that "both Google and Bing use data from social sites in order to determine how high to rank your website." I have always understood that social signals help drive links by spreading your content to a bigger audience, thereby getting your content in front of people who are likely to link. I also appreciate that content that is shareable is also likely to be linkworthy. However. Neil doesn't talk about correlation here, he talks about social signals as a ranking factor. Is he being misleading, or has the game changed since Matt Cutts said they don't use social signals?
Social Media | | CustardOnlineMarketing0 -
Social Media Analytics Software?
Hi All, Do any of you have recommendations on basic social analytics software? We are looking for something that's not to expensive, that's easy to use, and measures the basic stuff, hashtag mentions, tweets, likes, etc. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Regards, Margarita
Social Media | | MargaritaS0 -
Redesigning our agency site. A blank slate, any suggestions...?
I'm an SEO at a Web Design Agency and we are just about to start work on a new site. We have a complete blank slate to work with and the designers / developers will honor any requests I make. I'm not asking you guys to do my job for me, I've been doing a lot of research and I have a large feature set ready. However I am interested in what you guys would go for in this situation. What cool new SEO features can we use? Any examples of websites that you like? The creatives are very keen on HTML5, parallex scrolling and very minimalist design. I need to make sure we can achieve these things whilst also have a super optimised site. Any suggestions / examples? Thanks
Social Media | | SimpsonGareth0 -
Is using a platform to automatically cross post on the social media networks good for SEO?
Is cross posting automatically on the multiple social media networks good for SEO or bad?
Social Media | | Melia0 -
Identifying Social Activity of Competition in Open Site Explorer.
Analysing the competition in Open Site Explorer, as you all know the results come back with the following detail: Facebook Shares Facebook Likes Tweets Google +1 There is no link through to the pages that have liked, followed or tweeted the URL. I want to understand what the competition is doing in moire detail. How are these numbers actually defined? Is their any way (or whats the best way) to identify the individual pages that the numbers refer to? Thanks in advance. Justin
Social Media | | GrouchyKids0 -
Using a Social Media Infrastructure
I just wanted to share a technique I have had a great deal of success with called a Social Media Infrastructure. It has really increased the amount of followers on all of the social media sites I have been using. The first link explains a Social Media Infrastructure and the second link is somebody using the social media infrastructure whom has implemented the technique much better. http://kylelacy.com/social-media-seo-social-media-infrastructure/ http://brianwong.com/blog/how-to-automate-your-blog-workflow-and-increase-your-search-engine-ranking/ It does take some time to get all set up correctly, but it has increased my followers a ton. I am not going to claim that it gives you all the links and as much SEO benefit as they claim, but it does give your social media some muscle.
Social Media | | photoseo10 -
LinkedIn and SEO -- Is there a relationship?
I've analyzed the link profiles for 12 sites recently. I noticed that none included a link from LinkedIn, though each company had links on LinkedIn (I suspect this is because LinkedIn redirects outbound links). Are links on LinkedIn really good for SEO? (IE DO THEY PASS LINK JUICE !!!!!!!????) SuperStock_1491R-1130365.jpg linkedin.jpg linkedin-243x300.jpg
Social Media | | glennfriesen0 -
If I move my blog from subdomain to root, will my blog lose all of its authority? Social signals?
Moving my blog from blog.site.co.uk to site.co.uk/blog and just wondered if all the social data for each post will be lost including the blog authority which has been built up over time? Is 301 redirects enough to keep any of it?
Social Media | | SDOwner0