Two New Buttons You Should Add to Your Website

This week, Twitter and Google both launched new buttons that you can add to your website to help you expand your network and grow your visibility online.

Both of these announcements offer some great new website functionality for small business owners (especially since they’re free!). I wanted to make sure you were aware of these new tools and how they can benefit you and your website.

Twitter Follow Button

If you haven’t already heard, Twitter announced a new follow button to make it simpler and easier for people to follow someone on Twitter when visiting a website. Although Twitter has always provided buttons to use on your website, the new version eliminates one very important click – the one that takes users away from your website.

At first, this announcement didn’t sound very important to me. However, the change now eliminates the need for a visitor to your website to LEAVE your site to go to twitter and THEN click the follow button. Now, a visitor can simply click the “follow” button and continue browsing your content.

This is good news because it will keep visitors on your site longer. And, because the process is simplified, it will likely increase the number of followers you can get from your website.

My pal, Stanford Smith at Pushing Social, did a nice post about the various ways you can use the Twitter follow button. Check it out for some great ideas.

Bottom line: If you’re on Twitter and want to encourage website visitors to connect with you there, then I encourage you to check out this button and see how you can use it to grow your network.

Where to get it: If you want to add the button, you can grab the code here.

Google +1 Button

Yesterday, Google rolled out it’s new +1 Button, which is somewhat like Facebook’s “Like” button. In the coming days and weeks, you’ll being to start seeing sites with this button that will allow you to +1 a particular blog post or page.

However, what really differentiates the +1 Button from Facebook’s “Like” button is the impact this will have on search results. When people +1 a page, it will likely have show up higher in Google’s search results. And, who doesn’t want that?!

This is still very new so I haven’t seen it on very many websites yet, but this is bound to change quickly in the coming days and weeks.

Google is also integrating +1 into its search results, which means you will see when one of your Google contacts has +1’d an item that shows up in your search.

However, you will not see the +1 box in your search results by default. Since Google is rolling this out as an experiment, you have to opt-in to see the +1 button in your search results. You can opt in here.

Also, another important point to note, you have to be logged into your Google account to see the +1 button in your search results.

Bottom Line: I think there is a lot of potential for Google’s +1 button. Not only does it offer another way for people to share your content, but it may also give the opportunity for enhanced placement in search results. This is definitely something worth testing on your blog or website to see if you experience any change in traffic.

Where to get it: You can get the code to add the +1 button to your site here. If your website or blog is built on WordPress, Mashable offers great instructions for how to add the button on that platform.

You can also download a WordPress plug-in, which is the easiest option for adding the button to your site. Here’s the one I used and I’m sure there will soon be others that follow.

Have you added these new buttons to your site yet?