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
-
Researching where your brand is mentioned in Social Media
Greetings from Hot & sweaty Wetherby 😉 Ok imagine you want to launcg a socaila media campiagn for a client but before you jump into creating a facebook business page you decide to do some research first ie youw want to know if & where you brand is being discussed. So my question is: "What social media tool can you use to identify which social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook etc) is being used to discuss a brand" Thanks in advance,
Social Media | | Nightwing
David0 -
How important are social signals to SEO?
How important are social signals to SEO? Are generating social signals a must? It seems every website out there has some sort of social sharing tool installed, everyone is after a like or a tweet. Are we now looking at getting as many likes/tweets etc from real accounts as possible because actually they effect SERP's a lot. Cheers
Social Media | | activitysuper0 -
Very interesting test on social signals, thoughts?
According to this inforgraphic I found on Unbounce, the most powerful social signal is Google-Plus followers followed by Google-Plus votes. Now these results look amazing, so if this test is correct I need to gather 100 business page followers and a shed load of plus votes and I should see big movement in the SERP's? Thoughts? http://www.tastyplacement.com/wp-content/uploads/testing-social-signals.jpg testing-social-signals.jpg
Social Media | | activitysuper0 -
Social channels, tools sites for promoting a blog or article
Hello, I would like to promote blogs, articles etc. Can you give me some tips, advice on how to promote these? I guess everyone starts with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. After that, Reddit, StumbleUpon. Any other good ways (penguin proof) to promote a blog, article etc? Any tools you use: SocialOomph or something similar? Thanks! 🙂
Social Media | | ThomasH0 -
Is using a platform to automatically cross post on the social bookmarking websites good or bad for SEO?
Is using a platform to automatically cross post on the social bookmarking websites good or bad for SEO?
Social Media | | Melia0 -
How long until Social Spam achieves the same notoriety/problem as Link Spam used to be
What are people's thoughts on whether or not social spam will become a major problem soon, just like forum profile/blog comment spam, etc, and what do you think the search engines will do about companies that are blatantly gaming the social signals game I.E. since social proof seems to be google's answer to combating anchor text manipulation and content farms, what do you think will be google's answer to combating the rampant social spam that will surely overtake us.
Social Media | | ilyaelbert0 -
Is there a way on OSE or any other site to find the 50 most socially shared URLs on a given domain?
I'd love to see which URLs on a specific domain get socially shared the most. I know I can use OSE to say figure out exactly how much social sharing has happened on let's say this URL:
Social Media | | Almonds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama But what if I want to figure out the top 50 most shared URLs across all of wikipedia.org. Is that possible on OSE or anywhere else? If not, do you have some ideas on how something similar could be achieved?0 -
Social Bookmarking
Hello, In our SEO package that we use to sell our product to clients we list Social Bookmarking as one of the services we provide. What is the appropriate amount of social bookmarks that we should obtain monthly? How heavily do these weigh in your opinion? Thank you for your time
Social Media | | imageworks-2612900