Social Sharing Buttons – Should they be used everywhere?

“Hmm, what’s the quickest way to get more traffic without spending too much time or money? Oh I know, sharing buttons!”

If this is a familiar scene to you, you’re not alone. Sharing is so common nowadays, and you can see these social sharing buttons in every site, if not in every page already.

You probably decided to add these things because you noticed people with massive amounts of likes, and wanted in on that sweet, sweet traffic. But since you’re here, we can guess your efforts weren’t successful (if it is, good for you!), so, we made this article to answer some questions about these buttons, why your content is not being shared, and how to remedy it.

Are these buttons useful?

Definitely! It allows the page to be easily shared across several social service providers. If you’re using some social bookmarking services or widgets like AddThis, they can even track (for free!) which posts are getting shared and how many are sharing it. They also track if they were shared through other means.

Should I put sharing buttons on every page?

You can, but you shouldn’t. Reserve them for the content that you regularly update like blogs or news posts. Static pages will probably not be shared at all, unless it’s one of your popular pages in the site. Sometimes you can’t remove them because of a template or theme, but it’s perfectly alright to leave them in.

Does anyone actually click on these buttons?

Ah, zero likes. Quite a blow on the whole team’s morale, but I digress. People do use sharing buttons because it’s quicker than going to Facebook and copy pasting the page’s URL. You should use this as an opportunity to find out why your posts aren’t being shared, but like anything in social media, the most common culprit is the content. In any case, it’s a good indicator if your content is working or not.

Do they have a negative effect on my SEO if it has zero shares?

Zero shares aren’t exactly harmful, but they’re not good either. However, others might see the zero shares and likes, making it less likely for them to share as well. If you have recently implemented sharing buttons on your site, it’s expected that your older posts will have zero shares, so this is a great chance to shine the spotlight on your older posts.

If you like this post (ahem), we’ll appreciate it if you share using the social sharing buttons below, or by taking advantage of our Devon SEO service.