Is there any SEO benefit of adding the Facebook "Like" widget to your site?

[ProjectLabs]

A lot of sites put their Facebook "Like" widget on their homepage and it shows the number of people who like them.

Is there an SEO or marketing benefit to having this. I could see how this can provide social proof to visitors. Are there any other benefits?

[jennita]

I agree with what others are saying. While there is no direct SEO benefit, there are lots of indirect benefits. As noted already it shows social proof, helps with branding, can bring you second-hand links, etc.

Search and social are definitely melding, but social still needs to be social.

[Francisco_Meza]

I started off with ZERO likes too: shipoverseas.com. We all have to start somewhere. On this site I am using AddThis.

[eyepaq]

But if you add those and you get no likes - is almost like shooting your self in the foot. It dosen't look good to have an article or a page with 0 likes - that means there is no value there. if you have very few visits I would stay away for it as again, it dosen't look good.

My vote also goes to: no seo value in adding it.

my 2 cents.

[Francisco_Meza]

I use it as a source of credibility. Do spam site have a lot of like? Nope. If a site has 100s or even 1000s of likes, is a scam? Highly unlikely.

Too me Social Buttons are like being a member of BBB. It lends credibility. BTW, social buttons lend no SEO.

[CHADHARRIS]

I agree and disagree in the SEO relation and value.  I'm not a wizard but we have studied our pages that are popular in the " Like, Share, G+, Tweet etc"  and those all rank better.  In addition, it seems that several of of those shared links are populating well.

I do believe that valid "likes" from real consumers are very important to gaining knowledge about customer demographics.

We have " Like, Share, G+, Tweet etc"  on every product page, we've seen results.

Hope it helps,

Chad

[jlane9]

I agree, you are not going to put it there and then all of a sudden your seo is improved.

However,

You do want to make your site more user friendly and also make it easier to get likes and other social sharing benefits.

Over all the more social signals you have out there the better it will be going forward.

So put your main socal media profiles on your site to encourage your users to join you in other areas so you keep in touch and this will ultimately lead back to benefitiing your site for SEO purposes.

[Mark_Jay_Apsey_Jr.]

No direct SEO value.

The only value is if you can leverage the Facebook connection by creating more traffic to your site and you take advantage of social bookmarking with links back to your site on relevant keywords and topics.

Good luck. Hope this helps. if so please show me the awesome.

Mark