Remove Social Side Bar?
-
We recently had a site-redesign and since have lost traffic. We’re currently trying to clean up our code and improve site speed (which we know has become a very big problem). One of the things we tested was removing the social side bar. With that gone, our page speed, file size and requests to the page all improved greatly. And other than the homepage, we don’t see a lot of action on the social side bar with our internal category and subcategory pages.
With side bar: http://www.motivators.com/
Without: http://www.motivators.com/Trade-Show-Giveaways.html
We resubmitted the Trade Show Giveaways page to Google Webaster Tools yesterday and saw a 22-spot jump in ranking by this morning!
Given the circumstances, would it be unwise for us to remove that social side bar? Would it hurt us to lose those signals in the long run despite the overnight jump? Which is the lesser of two evils?
-
I feel like there could be conflicting answers on this one Social sharing has been such a popular thing to push for, more I think conceptually than for reality. Very few pages within a site do well with sharing - it's just usually not the type of info users want to share (no matter what marketers want to believe or what industry experts want to tell us).
The proof is in the numbers - so start there. Are people sharing your content? If they aren't, then what have you lost by removing it? (And I realize you kinda answered this question for yourself.) I'm of the belief that it works best on pages where there's content worth sharing - news, white papers, contests, etc. - if your system allows for specifics like that. And if the change with the social sharing overall will improve the user experience (like with load time), then is that a better trade off?
Since websites can have such different CRMs/platforms/coding, there's many things (I think ) that can play into performance or issues. Like, you resubmitted that trade show page and it may have jumped because Google hadn't crawled it in a long time, vs. because the social sharing changes. Just a possibility.
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
-
Social Trending
Hey, Just wondering what tools people recommend for finding out trending content on social media? Thanks
Social Media | | wearehappymedia1 -
Measuring reach and engagement on all social media platforms
What's the best tool for measuring reach and engagement on all social media platforms (or at least Twitter, Google+, Facebook) ?
Social Media | | RikkiD220 -
Facebook Page Banned and Removed Due to Negative Comments Against A Single Post - How to Recover?
Hello. I'm working with a very reputable company - and their Facebook page has completely disappeared. Yesterday, a random visitor flagged a couple posts as abusive, and today the page is gone. Some sort of negative social tactic. Has anyone experienced this and is there a way to recover? Is there a way to have Facebook reinstate the page? Thanks for any guidance you can provide!
Social Media | | WebTalent0 -
Do having social sharing icons such as Twitter and Pinterest slow down site speed?
We are debating a redesign of a travel site and wondering whether having social sharing buttons including Pinterest and Facebook above each image would slow down site speed and therefore have a negative impact on our rankings. We are deciding between having the icons above each image or just in the side bar of all pages. Many thanks, Penny
Social Media | | Pday0 -
Using BUFFER in Social Sharing
Hello everyone, I am inclining to use a platform from which to post my social content. I use mainly facebook, twitter, linked in, google +. I used Hoot, but found it difficult to include Linked In, and several other social media sites. Somebody has experience using BUFFER? Ive read about it, and it seems great! Would you recommend it? Thanks for your comments,
Social Media | | JesusD0 -
"Mister Wong" DoFollow Social Bookmarking Backlinks
Has anyone had any experience with the DoFollow social bookmarking tool "Mister Wong". Is it worth the fee for DoFollow links? Is this site subject to Google Panda penalties or others for essentially selling dofollow links? Is social bookmarking as a whole worth the time and effort? Does anyone have any alternative sites or strategies for acquiring a high volume of dofollow backlinks?
Social Media | | BethA0 -
Social Media Approaches for a Pest Control Company
Hi Everyone, I am working with a pest control company that is looking to branch out into social media. Their primary goal is to connect with their existing customers to improve retention. The secondary goal is to potentially pick up new clients. With that said, I wanted to see if you all had some ideas on things that they could tweet/facebook about on a regular basis? Posting about bugs on a daily basis gets pretty boring. I know Rand has been talking a lot lately about not being so narrow, so maybe we should talk more about general home improvement? Any thoughts or ideas? Thanks! EDIT: I should clarify that this is a company that has maintenance plans. You don't call them only when you have a problem. You sign up with them, and they treat your property every 3 months, or whenever you call. Only about 2% of their customer base is one-off phone calls to fix 1 problem and never come back again. I don't think their existing customer base will have any issues with Liking them on Facebook or following them on Twitter. The initial plan is to incentivize them to do so, but once we get the like/follow, we want to continually be in front of them with interesting content, contests as Jay suggested, etc.
Social Media | | brianspatterson2 -
Wordpress left side share buttons
Looking online I noticed sites like mashable listing share buttons on the left of the screen I think this is a great idea and a lot more prominent. So I then looked at the current solution we have on wordpress that lists them at the bottom of the individual posts. does anyone know of any plugins that list the share buttons to the left of the page ?
Social Media | | onlinemediadirect0