Almost without fail every new company should be using social media to promote their business so it goes without saying that having social icons / links on the site is recommended. Here is an example conversation that demonstrates the best practise in using social icons on a website.
[Website Client] Can I have a Facebook Box, Twitter Box and LinkedIn Box on my website
[Website Designer 1] Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn – I would suggest to use the ‘addsocial’ app. In the brief it was requested that the facebook link should be present. No mention of other social network links. If we had been told this at the beginning we could have placed them on the page so there would not of had just one facebook link. Do you want 3 social icons in a row? Perhaps Text links are more ‘clickable’ than images so their current facebook text link will do better than an icon link.
[Website Designer 2] Regarding the social icons we shouldn’t use a 3rd party plugin just to do the social icons as they are so easy / quick to plug in to a standard website.
[Website Designer 1] According to a moderator on a SEO forum both links pass equity, but image links are not as efficient as text links.
[Website Designer 2] Agree with your comment but you are talking about links passing Google pagerank not ease of use or ‘clickability’. The conversation at this stage has nothig to do with passing pagerank to a social network which is not something we want, need or should be concerned about. Social links using recognised social icons are the best way to attract attention and clicks and I think they look nice also. You can use the ones for any social links that clients want / need (there are two versions).
