Social Buttons Help SEO, 2 Questions...
-
Howdy Guys,
I noticed a weird thing over the weekend - our main keyword has been hit pretty hard by penguin and we had dropped down to #79.
On Friday I decided to change some on-page optimisation and changed the title tag and some
tags.
When I've ran my rank tracker this morning we have jumped up to #62... Has anyone else noticed just a simple change boosts rankings?
Second Questions We took all our social buttons off the website back in January as no-body was using them but from a few recent reports I've seen having the buttons on the site help organic rankings...
Is this true?
Scott
-
Just a quick comment about the social buttons...
I doubt that just adding social buttons to the site will help in itself, however the fact that the sites has the social buttons on their site 'may' indicate it is more likely that they have social activity based around their domain (although this isn't always the case!).
My own opinion is that the buttons just being there won't help, but if the webmaster is also interacting on a social level, getting tweets/likes and opening their social discussion somewhat, then I would say that this can certainly help, and maybe those social buttons are making it just that much easier for folks to share the content on the webmasters site, and so helping their social metrics?
People are pretty lazy online, so you need to make it as easy as possible for your website visitors, whether that is making it easier to buy something, fill out a form, or indeed, Tweet/Like your content!
That's my take anyway!
[EDIT] - I note you say you pulled the social buttons because nobody was using them... in which case rather than pulling the buttons off the website, I would look into WHY nobody was using them
If you can figure that out, you will likely increase the usability of your website, make it more 'people friendly' and interesting, and decrease your bounce rates - all of which 'could' help your rankings (and revenue!).
Things to look out for:
-
Overly heavy text (text is good, boring people to death isn't! Break the text up with images, YouTube embeds, etc)
-
Too many above the fold ads? Folks won't want to share a site full of ads (not saying your site is like this!)
-
Social buttons not obvious? - Are they placed where the reader needs them? Some form of CTA at the start, and at the end of content is a good idea 'usually'.
-
Any signs of life? - Do you get decent comments, have you got a Twitter feed or Facebook box on the site? - People like to get involved in active sites, try to show signs of a community based in/around your website. If you haven't got one, try to leverage one!
Phew! That was a big edit, sorry!
-
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
-
SEO rank down 35%
So I recently switched from an Opencart website to a Magento 2 website and my rank has dropped by 35% two weeks later, this is bad news. My old Magento website was 5 years old and was in desperate need of an upgrade, hence the Magento 2 site. I realised today that the canonical URLs on my stores were set to the individual stores as opposed to one store, thus I expect resulting in duplicate content issues (even though Google Webmaster Tools didn't show it). I'm just wondering if anyone else can see something I may be missing? My sites are: thespacecollective.com (primary) thespacecollective.com/us/ (canonical to primary) Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots0 -
Best SEO Strategy
Hi fellow Mozers: I have a question about strategy. I have a client who is a major real estate developer in our region. They build and sell condominiums and also built and manage several major rental apartments. All rental properties have their own websites and there is also a corporate website, which has been around for many years and has decent domain authority (+/- 40). The original intent of the corporate website was to communicate central brand positioning points, attract investors and offer individual profiles of all major properties. My client is interested in developing an organic search strategy which will reach consumers looking to rent apartments. Typical search strings would include the family whose core string would be 'apartments in Baltimore.' (Currently, the client runs PPC for each one of their properties. This is expensive and highly competitive.) In doing research, we've found that there are two local competitors who are able to break on to Page 1 and appear beside the National 'apartment search guides' who dominate the Page 1 SERPS (like apartments.com). The two local competitors have websites of either the same or lower authority than our client's; one has a better link profile, the other is comparable. Here's our problem: our local competitors only build and manage apartments. So, then, the home pages and all the content of their sites ONLY talk about apartment rental related information. Our client's apartment business is actually larger in scope than either local competitor but is only one of their major real estate verticals. So my question is this: if we want to build out a bunch of content which will rank competitively with our local competition, are we better off creating a new area of the corporate site, creating targeted content and resources appropriate for apartment seekers OR would we be better off creating an entirely new site, just devoted to the same? I'm wondering if a new section will ever rank well against competitors whose root domains actually feature content which is only rental related? Likewise, I'm wondering whether we'd be giving up too much, in terms of authority, by creating an entirely new site? I've also only found examples in the industry where an entirely new site was created, so it makes me question the strategy of building out a rental-specific section of a site which also contains information about their condo business. For instance, the Related Companies are a huge builder in the East; they have a corporate site and a site called https//relatedrentals.com . Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
10 quick questions for SEO experts!
Hey guys! I'm working to build something to make technical SEO audit less painful and I'd like to hear from other SEO experts. Can I ask you to answer this quick survey: https://mykoto.typeform.com/to/R5Gvyr THANKS!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jbrisebois0 -
HTTP to HTTPS Question
Hello, I have a question regarding SSL Certificates I think I know the answer to but wanted to make sure. One of our clients’ site uses http for their pages but when they started creating Registration forms they created a full duplicate site on https (so now there are two versions of all of the pages). I know due to duplicate concerns this could be an issue and needs to resolved (as well as the pros and cons of both) but if they are already set up with https does it make sense to just move everything there or in some instances would it pay to keep some pages http (using canonical tags, redirects, htccess…etc)? – Most of the information I found related to making the decision prior to having both or describing the process but I couldn’t find anything that specifically related to if both are already present. I thought that the best approach because everything’s already set up is to just move everything over to the more secure one but was curious if anybody had any insight? Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ben-R0 -
SEO issues with Magento
Hi Everyone, We use Magento CMS for our site and we are having a frustrating time resolving our SEO issues. The site was very poorly managed in years past and in the past year I have redesigned and cleaned up many things. However we are recently having trouble with indexing and keyword ranking. Issue #1: Our main keyword ranking has dropped quite a bit while our other less important keywords have steadily risen. I suspect a very strict robots.txt implemented back in early January may have been the culprit. We have since been modifying it with out much luck. Many of our pages are still blocked. 12/05/12 : ranked 12th 1/09/13: ranked 19th 1/16/13: ranked 35th Now: out of top 50 (52nd) Issue #2: Not a single image is being indexed. We are 0 for 582 according to Webmaster tools. Not sure why... Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated as I have great determination and interest in learning the correct way to fix/do this. Site: www.scojo.com Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | t_parrish0 -
SEO for eCommerce?
I'm working on a game plan for the on-page optimization for a growing e-commerce site (https://www.boutine.com) and I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with similar projects. Specifically, how to get the most SEO value out of product and category pages. Thanks in advance! -Adam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | boutine0 -
2 sites or one sites: 2 locations
Hello, I have a dog training client who is offering services in 2 separate locations. We're looking to be first in the non-local search results and also rank well in google places. Would it be better to go for 2 separate sites or one site and try to rank for 2 different locations with one site? There's both local and standard search results when we type in our keywords. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
SEO Strategy for Microsite
I am working on a project to build a microsite of sorts that will represent a joint program between two large organizations with established web presences and strong domains. Each of the organizations has dedicated sections on their sites speaking to the program, but the leadership has decided the joint program deserves it's own site with dedicated content. The two larger sites perform very well for SEO, and I don't necessarily want to jeopordize thir rankings by delivering content that competes directly with them. So I am doing some keyword research to find some opportunities that will alllow me to use the new site to target keywords not yet being captialized by the larger sites. My grand scheme is to have the three sites targeting the broadest array of keywords possible, thus maximizing exposure and avoiding competition. Here is the rub: the content between the three sites will be different but very similar, and there will be plenty of cross linking, especially from the existing sites to the new site, as we grow the brand of the joint program. I'm curious to here some expert opinions on what the puitfalls of the strategy are and what are some of the things I can do to avoid falling in the black hat category - I recognize that proliferating sites around a single topic and cross linking them is black hat. The organizations simply want to build a brand around a joint program and we are striggling to do that without a dedicated website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AmyLB0