SEO – Search Engine Optimization has greatly changed over the last couple of months. Today, SEO takes into account social share buttons as a means of increasing the ranking of a blog or e-commerce site in search engine. Social share buttons are the lines of widgets (i.e. Facebook, Bing, Google +, Twitter and E-mail) found at the top or bottom of the page. Social share buttons also commonly referred to as social signals enable your audience to submit your blog content to their preferred social media network. Basically, social share buttons enable your audience to endorse your blog content on your behalf. Unfortunately, according to a study that was carried out by BrightEdge reveals that roughly half of the biggest 10,000 blog and e-commerce sites do not showcase any type of social signal.

Are Social Share Buttons Essential For SEO Campaigns?

The answer to this question is a definite yes. A majority of market leading search engines have openly confessed that social signals are being added to their ranking algorithm. This in turn means that, the more the content of your blog or e-commerce site is shared, posted, liked or tweeted, the more valuable it is to a search engine. As such, if your blog or e-commerce site lacks social share buttons, it means that you are losing big on social signals. The study went further to reveal that blogs and e-commerce sites that have social signal buttons are mentioned at least seven times in a social network site.

What It Will Do For You?

Social share buttons also enable you to reach out to a wider audience. While you may have been in online business for quite some time now, the truth is that not every online user has heard of your business enterprise. Not everyone within your social network is your target audience. However, this does not mean that you cannot extend beyond your current audience. Social signal buttons enable those that are already within your network to share your site contents on their profile pages. This in turn means that, every Tom, Dick and Harry that is within their network can access your blog or site content. Do not underestimate the distance that a Tweet or Facebook post can reach. The more your site content is shared on social network, the more prospect customers you are exposed to.

How It Is Useful?

Social signal buttons also makes your site content more user-friendly. Including social signal buttons to your blog or e-commerce site is the one thing which you can do in order to enhance the general user- sociability of your website. Social signal buttons enable your audience to post the contents they find thought-provoking to their social page profiles at the click of a button. They do not have to exit your blog in order to do it. While it may not seem tedious for your readers to exit your blog or e-commerce site so as to share the contents of your page, you are putting them through additional steps which may prevent them from having to visit your site in the near future.

Crystal J. Briscoe is from Self Test Engine. Looking for 350-030 exam help? Let’s take advantage of Self test engine self paced 640-461 training and pass your IT exams on first try.