Social buttons slow down the site’s performance, claims Search Engine Journal

Now that’s interesting. According to an article by Doug Antkowiak published by Search Engine Journal only yesterday, “In 2007, Amazon reported for every 100 ms increase in load time, Amazon.com decreased sales by 1 percent. When it comes to search engines, Google has been using site speed as a search ranking signal since 2010.” So, in terms of Internet marketing, the website’s speed affects both the search engine rankings and conversions. Apparently, speeding up your website is a win-win, while neglecting it is a lose-lose? Or is it too much of a cliché?

Anyway, while it is a bad idea to eliminate the social sharing buttons altogether, Doug tells us to keep only those that people actually use, thus showing your visitors that your content is popular. Those that show no votes of confidence are useless anyway – more so, even harmful. And once again, they slow your website down. Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are usually quite enough.