Social button yes or social button no...
-
Hi everybody!
It's quite clear that if you have a pretty, clean, compact html code on your website, Google loves you as a lovely mom does with her kids.
But it's not a dream world and you have actually to choose between social and clean code.
In fact to add, for example, the Facebook social button, you have to include some files from the Facebook servers. Even though the googlebot doesn't download them (but people do, with page optimization decreasing), it reads some javascript code. Moreover you have to add some code where you want the button appears.
I think it hasn't much sense for the googlebot, so that could it be punitive for your website / page to place that bunch of code?
In the end my question is the following:
Does the social power win against negative factors like additional files to download and a bunch of ugly code in your body?
social power > bad factors (file downloading+more code)?
-
Thanks for your reply Jamie.
I think there's not only black and white in code writing. Theoretically you have to produce perfect html/xhtml W3C standards compliant code but you also have to face many changes in standards, the needs of your website, cost ties, velocity issues etc. For example, if you try to validate the piece of code I placed upon, using xhtml 1.1 standard, the w3c website will warn you because you can't use not supported attributes.
It's clear: Google doesn't need to follow standards, beacuse Google makes the standard, but what really Google thinks about my site without Facebook buttons is the same as it would think with them? For example if I insert the following piece of code which is a tag that describes the entity your page represents, what's the googlebot's impression?
In the end also a visitor will perceive the difference, if he will have to wait additional secs, waiting for the file download, especially if he uses an old single download channel browser.
I don't know if the sum of all theese issues exceedes the advantages. Does someone has some evidence about it?
-
Hello,
How do you measure "clean, compact code"? As far as I am aware the primary measurement is code validation as per W3C standards (http://validator.w3.org). I checked the line of code you shared and it is valid HTML5 code.
Google has the ability to crawl invalid code as well. There are millions of sites and many of them use invalid code, including Google.com. I always recommend using valid code but just because code is invalid does not mean Google will have any problem crawling or indexing your site. Each error needs to be evaluated.
In the case above, there does not seem to be any problem with the code so I do not see any concern in using it. Aside from code optimization, I would still use it. Social media has been shown to offer a greater traffic boost then any other factor. It's a must for your website.
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
-
Yoast Social Accounts URL Section
Hi When you click: Social within Yoast plugin it defaults to 'Account' tab and displays a list of fields to enter your social media account urls. Sentence above list says: "To inform Google about your social profiles, we need to know their URLs. For each, pick the main account associated with this site and please enter them below" What does that mean exactly and does it effect links on the site etc or literally is just Yoast telling G ? Also if you have sub sites for different language versions (WP on Multi User setup), which in turn have their own language specific social media account versions , should you enter those urls in the sub site language version own Yoast plugin fields OR , as per "...pick the main account associated with this site and please enter them below" use the primary social account and not the language specific social account or just leave them blank ? Many Thanks Dan
Social Media | | Dan-Lawrence1 -
Pay with a Tweet (or other social payments) in the Freemium world
Hi Mozer(s), I work for a company which provides cloud-based collaboration environments for companies. Like many companies in this field, we offer a Free package, which gives users enough capabilities to explore our tool under business-alike circumstances. However, we currently dont have a time limit for our free version - which, makes us (I think) quite unique from a competitive standpoint. But consequently, it also means a lot of users see no immediate need to upgrade to a business package. If maintaining this business model, we are considering various options in how to generate more awareness. The company is quite new and can generally only get better results of SEO and social media advancement. One alternative is to start charging for signup to the Free package, using Social payments scheme, i.e. get access to the collaboration tools for free if liking, tweeting, plusing us, using a pre-defined message, hashtag, etc, using a hybrid approach, allowing users to edit some/all of the message. It may have an impact on number of sign ups, but are there other potential negative effects? I have seen some comments, both positive and negative, about its SEO impact, mostly positive, not least from this [Youmoz post](How To: Win Tweets and Influence Search Engines with PayWithaTweet).- though unlikely to have a direct SEO effect, it can increase sharing, exposure and SERP presence. But any flip sides social payment users should be aware of? Thanks in advance.
Social Media | | Clinked0 -
Social media and google
Do you need exact url brand match to get the benefits of social media noise in the google organic rankings? EG: twitter.com/brandname facebook.com/brandname my url extensions have my brnad but other words in, if i get noise does my website stil benefit in the rankings because it has the url in the profile? or do i need exact match in the url?
Social Media | | pauledwards0 -
Why isn't SEOMoz using Wistia's social sharing feautes?
I noticed that SEOMoz does not make use of Wistia's social sharing buttons such as a Facebook Like button. Is there any disadvantage to using the like button via Wistia rather than copy/pasting it in static HTML?
Social Media | | TheDude0 -
Do Your Social Metrics Such As Tweets Transfer With a 301?
Got asked this today, and I don't know the answer, so throwing it out there to all your mozzers! If I 301 redirect a page that has built up a lot of tweets, likes, shares, even +1's, does that social data get transferred over to the new page in as far as social strength/ authority is concerned? Would Google still be able to see the previous version of this page had x amount of tweets etc, and take this into consideration when ranking the new page?
Social Media | | PerchDigital0 -
Sherpas for a journey of best practices for social media marketing?
What are early-stage (0-6 months) best practices for social media marketing in a business to business market? Our customers are professional buyers of electronic components. We are doing it backwards. We registered Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and a few more. +5 for initiative. -5 for not having a social media marketing plan. -5 for not having someone helping us who really knows how to engage with our audience. This is also a humble request to SMM gurus out there who have room for a new client. I'm looking for our sherpa. Thanks!
Social Media | | groovykarma0 -
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 -
Social Content Posting - Post to Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter and Linked in at the same time
Hi, Is there any means of posting new content for my companies various social profiles in the one go rather than having to log into each one? This would save a lot of time. Thanks
Social Media | | fdep0