Custom Social Media icons: Good or bad?
-
Hi guys,
In our never-ending search for better SEO strategies and results, our journey has led us to question the idea of creating custom social media icons for our site. We are wondering if anyone has had experience, either negative or positive, by using these icons, or if there is no difference at all?
I would like to make it clear that we are only thinking about customizing the icons that lead to our Facebook page, Twitter profile, YouTube channel, etc. NOT the like/share/tweet/etc buttons. We understand the negative effects in changing those icons, but are interested in knowing if creating general icons that match our design will be a good or bad thing.
Any replies are appreciated, thanks!
-
Besides what Ryan said, I'd also add that they still need to clearly convey that they're links to those social media sites. I've seen some customized icons that have gone too far on the stylistic side and they were impossible to tell what they were for.
-
Stylistic changes, such as your social media icons, can be good or bad depending on how your visitors perceive them.
If you had a Star Trek theme site, you could stylize your icons to look like Star Trek badges. If your users fall in love with the look, that could lead to your site being mentioned and linked to from other related sites, and even graphic design sites. Your users may like the look so much they decide to click on them more often.
Alternatively, if your visitors disliked the icons they could be used less.
This design decision really isn't much different then any other design decision you could make for your site. At the highest end, you can create a design that is so loved, others either pay you to use your design, or you share it free and receive links based on the design.
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
-
Counting unique landing pages in Google Analytics: social vs organic channels
Remember the technique Rand posted for counting the unique indexed landing pages on a site? http://moz.com/blog/indexation-for-seo-real-numbers-in-5-easy-steps I'm using Google Analytics to compare this result for the "social" channel vs. the "organic search" channel. The idea is to see whether social or search delivers people to more unique landing pages. I would expect organic search to yield a significantly higher count, due to long tail searches for relatively obscure terms. We have an archive of over 500k pages that Google could be indexing, even if only a fraction of a percent of those might be getting social mentions. But that's not what the numbers show -- I'm seeing roughly 10% higher numbers for the Social channel than for Organic Search. Again, I'm counting unique landing pages here, not the total pageviews or visits. If anyone else here is monitoring these metrics, please chime in with your results. What's the baseline expectation for a large website with hundreds of thousands of pages of issue-centric user-generated content? Should search traffic provide 2x more landing page exposures than social? 5x? 10x? or 0.9x, as in my case? In short, I believe these numbers are pointing to an indexing/ranking problem following a recent site redesign.
Social Media | | mcglynn0 -
Social media marketing strategy for an ERP company?
Hello Everybody, We are an ERP company and want to get into social media marketing. We have decided to use Google+ over Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Any ideas what we can do besides regular updates and getting our clients link to us? Regards
Social Media | | IM_Learner0 -
Monitor Social Traffic
SocialAppsHQ has revised their pricing plans. https://www.socialappshq.com/home/pricing?utm_medium=email&utm_source=pricechange We have been using both their Apps and Social Monitoring. The Apps has worked pretty well for us and the revised pricing will actually be cheaper for us, so I'll likely continue with that feature. As for the Social Monitoring, perhaps I'm not using it effectively, but I get notice of social traffic too late to be really useful. To help generate viral lift in Twitter, for example, I need to be notified within an hour or so that someone has mentioned our product. If I am notified eight hours after the original tweet, then many on the east coast are already asleep and I can't retweet effectively until the next day, and it looses impact when the discussion is cold. Also, the revised pricing makes this feature much more expensive for us. What services can you recommend that will give us rapid notification of search phrases on FB and Twitter? Best,
Social Media | | ChristopherGlaeser
Christopher0 -
Is it possible to get high page ranking with no social media activity?
I'm curious to know how much social media effects the chances of being more highly ranked on Google. I appreciate it's important to 'be seen' by Google, but if articles/newsletters are being written, does it really matter if a business isn't using Twitter or Facebook, etc?
Social Media | | lindsayjhopkins0 -
Social Media updating
Hi, I was wondering if anyone would be able to tell me how SEOMoz records social media statistics. Namely when does SEOMoz record new: Facebook Likes Tweets Facebook Shares Google+ +1's I was wondering this because for campaigns that I am running the social media statistics displayed on SEOMoz are different to what is actually there. Thank you for any help.
Social Media | | SueCook_TAOS0 -
UK home improvement - building links or social shares?
Hi We are a regional UK installer of double glazing windows, doors and conservatories and I am looking to build the amount of quality links to the website to help improve our search position - 1st page for keywords such as conservatories, double glazing, pvc doors, pvc windows, composite doors What is the best approach to do this? Search for double glazing inurl:forum pvc doors inurl:forum and locate forums, but what is the best approach answer questions with the web address in the signature of the post? Looking at the major national players in opensite explorer such as anglianhome.co.uk
Social Media | | ocelot
safestyle-windows.co.uk
greenwayupvc.com
everest.co.uk
valuedoorsuk.co.uk
yaledoor.co.uk/ Their backlink profiles look quite spammy? as they mostly point to web directories So is there a gap that I can take advantage of? We have little budget for sponsored articles on sites like what anglian have been doing looking at the backlinks but are there any other articles that I could write for our site that would help improve quality links to the site for keywords such as conservatories, double glazing, pvc doors, pvc windows, composite doors Same with their social profiles they seem quite poor, what would be the best approach on Facebook and Twitter to attract local followers - the majority of social followers I have seen have been fellow marketers or rival companies on the follower lists of twitter Many Thanks0 -
Does anyone know of a good place where I can make or have an iframe hosted for a page tab on Facebook?
I just want a simple place that will host an image for the tab. I don't want it to look cheap or tacky (obviously) Any suggestions?
Social Media | | hwade0 -
What are your top 3 social bookmarking and social networking sites for Ecommerce?
I am trying to figure out the best social bookmarking and social networking sites to use for my eCommerce sites. Often in the social bookmarking platforms posting a review or a product is instantly considered spam. I know that having links from these types of sites are important but I don't want to come across as spam. What creative solutions do you use for this challenge?
Social Media | | purch0