12 February 2013

Social Media

It Has Been Proven That Social Signals Work!

Social Signals And SEO

Anyone who grasps basic knowledge of SEO knows that the more quality backlinks you have, the higher your site will rank in Google… that is simple! Did you know that SEO is starting to change? In the past the bulk of successful SEO used to be backlinks being created on;

• Blog posts
• Directories
• Guest posts etc…

Today, social signals on social media sites such as; Twitter, Google+, Facebook etc., are playing a bigger role in how websites are ranked for targeted search phrases. Some SEO experts would argue that obtaining a substantial number of specific social signals will have more of an affect compared with the more traditional methods.

What does this mean for your SEO campaign I hear you ask? This means that it is time that you changed your strategy…

There was a recent study which looked into the power of Facebook shares, links, comments and Twitter tweets. The effect of each social signal was established by what is known in the industry as Spearman’s Rank Correlation-Coeffefficent- the higher number the method achieved, the more likelihood of a backlink being generated. This study was carried out for several weeks and after detailed analysis the study showed that Facebook shares had the highest score of 0.37, traditional backlinks scored 0.36, Facebook comments scored 0.33, Facebook likes scored 0.30 and Twitter tweet scored 0.25.

What The Data Means…

This data clearly shows that social signals have a lot of power and will dramatically affect your SEO campaign. Facebook shares are proven to be the most powerful in generating backlinks, overtaking traditional backlinks… whilst Facebook comments and likes and Twitter tweets weren’t as powerful, but they can still be beneficial for a business.

At present, there is only data available for Facebook and Twitter because they are to date the most used social media sites. Saying this, it is highly possible that other social signals from other sites have similar associated benefits.

Don’t Fall Behind…

There is concrete evidence that shows that social media can definitely improve your businesses SEO campaign. So if you haven’t already got an account set up for your business on social media websites, what are you waiting for? Social share buttons can then be included on your main website so that people can easily share your content.