Social Buttons Help SEO, 2 Questions...

[ScottBaxterWW]

Howdy Guys,

I noticed a weird thing over the weekend - our main keyword has been hit pretty hard by penguin and we had dropped down to #79.

On Friday I decided to change some on-page optimisation and changed the title tag and some

tags.

When I've ran my rank tracker this morning we have jumped up to #62... Has anyone else noticed just a simple change boosts rankings?

Second Questions We took all our social buttons off the website back in January as no-body was using them but from a few recent reports I've seen having the buttons on the site help organic rankings...

Is this true?

Scott

[MikeGracia]

Just a quick comment about the social buttons...

I doubt that just adding social buttons to the site will help in itself, however the fact that the sites has the social buttons on their site 'may' indicate it is more likely that they have social activity based around their domain (although this isn't always the case!).

My own opinion is that the buttons just being there won't help, but if the webmaster is also interacting on a social level, getting tweets/likes and opening their social discussion somewhat, then I would say that this can certainly help, and maybe those social buttons are making it just that much easier for folks to share the content on the webmasters site, and so helping their social metrics?

People are pretty lazy online, so you need to make it as easy as possible for your website visitors, whether that is making it easier to buy something, fill out a form, or indeed, Tweet/Like your content!

That's my take anyway!

[EDIT] - I note you say you pulled the social buttons because nobody was using them... in which case rather than pulling the buttons off the website, I would look into WHY nobody was using them

If you can figure that out, you will likely increase the usability of your website, make it more 'people friendly' and interesting, and decrease your bounce rates - all of which 'could' help your rankings (and revenue!).

Things to look out for:

• Overly heavy text (text is good, boring people to death isn't! Break the text up with images, YouTube embeds, etc)

• Too many above the fold ads? Folks won't want to share a site full of ads (not saying your site is like this!)

• Social buttons not obvious? - Are they placed where the reader needs them? Some form of CTA at the start, and at the end of content is a good idea 'usually'.

• Any signs of life? - Do you get decent comments, have you got a Twitter feed or Facebook box on the site? - People like to get involved in active sites, try to show signs of a community based in/around your website. If you haven't got one, try to leverage one!

Phew! That was a big edit, sorry!