The Wonderful World of Web Design - Creating a social page

Our previous post in our six part blog series focused on SEO and link building and the importance of getting your site ranked and noticed.  SEO might be one of the most important factors when starting your new webpage since it is the main principle behind getting web surfers to your website.  SEO consists out of many factors, but one major influence on your SEO ranking is the interaction with your site and fresh content. 

In steps social media.

Social media links, feeds, shares, and comments can drive interaction and communication on your site, thus pushing up your SEO ranking and driving traffic to your site.  The social monster that is Facebook has taken over the world and has redefined what your SEO strategy should entail.   Facebook comments, feeds and likes are a common tread on all high ranking web pages.  Your social platforms should be very visible on your site, and not just on the ‘Contact Us’ form, but on every single page.  Use a social commenting widget to create links back to you website and to share information from your site or blog on other social streams.  A great example of the use of social media on a website is www.mashable.com.

Here are a few how-to tips on getting the major social widgets on your website.  Note that you will have to have a profile on these platforms before you can add them to the website.

Twitter:

1. Log into Twitter
2. Click Resources at the bottom of the details pane on the right hand side of your screen.
3. Select See all Widgets
4. Select My Website
5. Select the widget that shows the Tweets you'd most like to display on your website:

• Profile Widgets display recent Tweets from a specific user.
• Search Widgets display highly customizable search results in real time (perfect for live events, conferences, brands etc.)
• Faves Widgets will show all the Tweets you have marked as Favorite
• List Widgets show off a list of users you've curated. Great for showing off a subset of interesting folks' Tweets.

Facebook

To show Facebook information via a badge on your website, go to http://www.facebook.com/badges/.  You can select any of the four badges:  Photo, Page, Profile or Like Badge

To add the Comments Box to your site, follow these simple instructions:

1. Set up a basic Connect application. Take note of the API key and specify a callback URL to your website.
2. Download this cross-domain receiver file, and upload it to your website.
3. Add these snippets of code to each file where you want a Comments Box.
4. Within the tag, add: xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml"
5. Add the following code wherever you want a Comments Box to appear in your page. Replace '''YOUR_API_KEY_HERE''' with your API key, and include the path to the cross-domain receiver.

Google+

Once you’ve set up your Google+ account for your business, head over to http://widgetsplus.com/ and grab a custom G+ widget for your website.

LinkedIn

Make it easy for your customers to recommend you by adding LinkedIn’s Recommend button on your site

Embed this “recommend” button on your website, for each of your services or products so your customers can recommend with just the click of a mouse.

The code:

To get your Company ID
Go to linkedin.com and click on “Companies” and search for your company by name. Go to your company profile. Your Company ID is the number in the URL i.e. the URL follows the format http://www.linkedin.com/company/CompanyID. Replace “CompanyID” in the above code snippet with your actual Company Id.

To get your Product ID
To get code snippets for additional services (or products), just replace the Product ID # (data-product=) in the code snippet above. You can find the Product ID # for any of your products from the URL of your respective product pages – it’s the number that follows “prdid=” in the URL.

For example, LinkedIn’s Company ID is 1337, and the Product ID for Recruiter is 1441.

Well done on creating a social, interactive website. 

You will soon see the remarkable fruits of your labor with improved communication, better SEO rankings and more website visits.

If you’d like more information on social media, contact us for a free review of your social sites.