We’ve been studying the influence that social signals have on rankings for the past few years, our search for “social proof” is built directly into our platform, and it’s measured every day.
Along the way, we’ve tried to keep updates coming as we learn and test – here’s a few helpful posts if you’re still new to the topic:
http://blog.rankpay.com/hashtags-have-value-in-search/
http://blog.rankpay.com/integrating-social-media-seo/
Following is a quick video presented by Matt Cutts from Google that directly states how they currently view social signals:
When it comes to Google, a few things are very clear:
- Hummingbird’s infrastructure was designed to help process & understand social signals.
- The value of these signals is continuing to evolve.
- We continue to see a high correlation, not direct causation, between businesses that embrace their social profiles, and update/share with regularity –vs- sites whom have never set-up their profile, and/or sites that have a profile although rarely (if ever) utilize them to help distribute their content, or engage with their community.
Here’s an infographic from Niel Patel that provides a compelling look at a few case studies:
There’s ongoing industry debate regarding the specific weight social signals will ultimately carry in the engine’s algorithms, and there’s continued evidence that points to Google in particular valuing the authority that someone has regarding a topic.
We trust this value will continue to rapidly change over the next 12-18 months. Therefore, we highly recommend securing your site’s social profiles now, if you haven’t already done so:
- Facebook – the largest social network;
- Twitter – the source for real-time information;
- YouTube – the home of online video (and a Google property);
- LinkedIn – the professional networking platform; and
- Google+ - the social layer of Google to understand connections & improve relevancy
The following blog post highlights a number of best practices associated with your site’s social presence:
http://blog.rankpay.com/maintaining-social-profiles-for-seo/
As you can see from our learnings, as well as the case studies, and directly from Google — the signals from social are becoming increasingly more important to earning and preserving rankings in the engines. Please let us know at support@rankpay.com if you have any challenges setting-up your profiles, or implementing the sharing buttons on your site – we’re happy to help.
