Is there an SEO benefit/drawback to streaming social media to your site?

[KempRugeLawGroup]

I understand how streaming social media, especially if you have a great social media community, can be effective in terms of capturing customers. However, I'm purely interested in knowing what it does for SEO.

For example, does streaming social media make it look like your home page (or whatever page(s) has it) are constantly being updated?

Or, does streaming g+ have a positive effect but facebook not so much?

Or, does it have a negative effect for whatever reason that might be?

Thanks,

Ruben

[JaneCopland]

Hi Ruben,

There are no negatives to streaming content like this (G+, Facebook or Twitter) that we are aware of, although it isn't likely that these will be seen as "constantly updated content", especially due to how some of these feeds are coded. Often, they use iframes or similar that don't actually show Google's bots what is in the streamed box: Google just sees that there is a Twitter widget or similar on the site. For other types of streaming, Google can read and index the content but will still absolutely understand that it comes from a third party. That said, good social interaction is a good sign (although not a confirmed "ranking factor") and thus can be considered a positive.

[jlane9]

Hello Ruben,

In your question I would say you are correct that the Google + would be better than FaceBook feed. I can't think of any negative impact other than page load speed. Depending on your page speed now you may be O.K. with the added code. If your page is already a bit slow, adding more code / scripts to your page may not be a good idea. I would also consider what would be best for my website visitors ? Are they using G+ or FaceBook ? Do what's best for your visitors.

Here is an article we have done about a page speed test on our own website.

http://www.searchboostmarketing.com/search-engine-optimization/speed-up-your-website-for-better-seo-results.html

Hope that helps !

Joe