Facebook like buttons slows page for SEO purposes?

[born2run]

Hi on my sites mainpage I have links to my latest news etc and below each link I have a Facebook like button

I may have about 15 fb like buttons on my home page

My question is would this slow down my site loading and negative for Google SEO? Kindly assist. Thanks!

[born2run]

Anyone want to help? Thx!

[engine]

Actually, we ended up removing the buttons as they were painfully slow: We could not find the solution. We were more concerned over the impact on users.

[born2run]

So removing the like buttons from homepage should speed up the site while loading it?

[bakedjake]

Like buttons cannot be customized, so you're stuck with their load time if you want to use them. Removing them will make the page load faster in the user's browser.

As an alternative, you can have CSS-only sharing buttons. They're very fast and customizable to suit your needs.

[simplesharingbuttons.com...]

I use this one, which uses JS but is very fast too:

[github.com...]

Lots of other similar examples for sharing.

[born2run]

Hi is there any consensus about what's the fastest and best way to implement the social media buttons on our sites? Kindly assist Thanks!

[tangor]

Are you convinced having social buttons will actually improve your site metrics? Find that out first before papering the site with buttons. ie. ONE (1) like at a time for one article, or page, at a time. See if you get any results.

Regardless of "consensus" not all things get shared.

[ken_b]

bakedjake; thanks for this

[simplesharingbuttons.com...]

[Nutterum]

@tangor and @born2run

We ended up removing the like buttons. They were just not a good fit for the content we offered. A good rule of thumb when optimizing a website for speed is to remove everything that is a secondary or tertiary CTA on your page.

My personal opinion is that the like button is outdated CTA that the users do not interact with or if they do, the benefit is marginal at best. The only thing people who like what they read is share. And more often than not its not share on their FB wall, but share in the mobile messenger of their choice (or Slack ;) ). So yeah, ditch those buggers.

[supafresh]

I ditched like buttons on landing pages a few years ago due to speed and low interaction.
When its been on the page for 2 years and nobody has clicked it.. its time to go.

We still get likes naturally