At Techcrunch when we removed the share buttons average traffic to each post dropped 20-25%. We saw no jump in number of blog links, or tumblr's, or anything else.
One thing I'm learning about SEO, is that you have to know your audience. This means you should know what they are searching for, and optimise for that. Likewise if your audience is a big user of twitter (which TechCrunch's audience would be), then use that to your advantage.
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At Techcrunch when we removed the share buttons average traffic to each post dropped 20-25%. We saw no jump in number of blog links, or tumblr's, or anything else.
One thing I'm learning about SEO, is that you have to know your audience. This means you should know what they are searching for, and optimise for that. Likewise if your audience is a big user of twitter (which TechCrunch's audience would be), then use that to your advantage.