Do social media shares affect search rankings?

[Blazonz]

Hi folks,
I don't know this is true or it's only my imagination when I checked some website with more social networks shares then they have higher rankings than others when finding with same keywords.
My question is, do social media shares affect SEO?

What are your thought?

 

[SEOPub]

No they don't. Higher ranked sites are more likely to get shares and likes because they generally get more visitors and traffic.

 

[Eoon]

Hi folks,
I don't know this is true or it's only my imagination when I checked some website with more social networks shares then they have higher rankings than others when finding with same keywords.
My question is, do social media shares affect SEO?

What are your thought?

I think it has affected on SEO, more shares, more traffic you will get and your brand name is promoted and known.

No they don't. Higher ranked sites are more likely to get shares and likes because they generally get more visitors and traffic.

Why some SEO tools like woorank or other tools counted social networks shares as one of factor to calculate SEO score for websites on their tool, I'm wondering that

Am I right or wrong?

 

[Nytshade]

Yes social shares do play a role in search engine rankings, I don't do any backlinking I only rely on social media but I rank higher than my competition who build backlinks.

Not just lousy backlinks, they build good backlinks and I'm not saying my website doesn't have any backlinks. It does have backlinks which are organic backlinks but they don't have a lot of weight and most of them are even Nofollow. I don't do any link building, zero!

So I believe my website is getting search engine traffic because of the social shares and high social media engagement. So yes social media does have an effect on seo and can help improve rankings.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

If you are talking about the site in your signature, there are a ton of links pointing at that site.

If you think you are ranking well because of social signals, you are just making up what you want to believe.

Try to actually rank something with no links in a moderately competitive SERP. Then tell us that social signals play a role in rankings.

Right now you are just misleading people that do not know any better.

And this is why this myth won't die.

 

[Nytshade]

Nytshade

haha... cool guy. But the website on my signature is not the website I'm talking about. The website in my signature got backlinks because I created a JV launch but I don't do any seo for it, I use it to build a list.

All your posts on the forum are just like this one but you never mention what improves rankings. Can you please let us know what makes a website rank because I don't build backlinks on my website. This is why I think social media is what's making my website rank because social media marketing is all I do.

I'm not misleading people, I'm just telling them what's working for me, my results, no theory.

 

[elcidofaguy]

elcidofaguy

I certainly do not think that is the case ;-) For sure if one simply adopted a social media only approach and engaged their audience with great postings etc then for sure that will influence folks to create backlinks which helps and in addition to having a separate source of traffic which is not dependent on G.... and that is a great thing to diversify your traffic away from just relying on the SERPs... Either way this is a debate which is never going to end anytime soon.... that said I'm a fan of social media... but as mentioned my view is that social signals does not have a direct impact to rankings as its indirect which is a subtle difference... Does it matter? Well I don't think so as long as it is working for you....

Like you I'm curious to hear of SEOPubs advice on how to rank a website as well as use of which third party metrics as per this thread as that seems a little vague to me from someone who obviously knows tons on this subject...

 

[Nytshade]

Nytshade

haha... and the question was not whether it improves rankings or not, it was "How to increase Page Authority". I would also like to see him backing up his statements with some value and facts instead of just saying "this is BS" "this doesn't work" yada yada

SEOPub your posts are not helping anyone, tell us what works guy and backup your statements with some value.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

If you say that social signals improve rankings, then yes, you are misleading people. It may not be intentional.

Social signals do not improve rankings. This has been tested over and over again.

If your site is ranking it is either because of weak competition, links that are being created by others, internal links on the site, or some combination of the three. If it is ranking because of social signals, it is the first website ever to rank based on social signals.

Forget about the fact that myself and others have tested this and seen that it does not work. Just look at it from a business perspective on Google's side. There is no way Google would put a portion of the algorithm into the hands of something that can be gamed far easier than links and that they could be shut out of at any moment. They cannot crawl half of Facebook as it is. What happens if Facebook or Twitter decides to block Googlebot one day? It's happened before. It would throw the SERPs all out of whack.

Social media is great for generating traffic, branding, and keeping in touch with customers. Likes, Tweets, and ReTweets do not have a direct impact on rankings.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

That thread was not about which 3rd party metrics to use for anything. The person was specifically asking how to increase Page Authority, which is just an exercise in futility. Page Authority does not improve rankings and is easily manipulated. I have blasted the shit out of pages with nothing but spam and increased their PA to over 50. It's useless though.

As for evaluating pages for links and such, I look at a combination of PA, MozRank, and Trust Flow. Mostly though, I am interested in the content of the page, the content of the site, the internal link structure pointing to the page where my link will be, and the external links pointing to the page.

For evaluating domains for a private network, the metrics are nothing more than a filter. I use them to weed out domains that are most likely useless, but I do not make any buying decisions based on metrics. That is a great way to lose money and a big reason most people fail when they try to create their own network.

The only thing that matters for a domain to be used for a private network are the quality of the live links. Links that tools like Majestic and Ahrefs show do not tell the whole story. They are great at finding links, but not so great at keeping their database up to date as to whether or not the links still exist today.

 

[Nytshade]

Nytshade

Maybe Google was smart enough to figure out that you're spamming and trying to manipulate the algorithm. Just like you said "SPAM"

But anyway your statements still don't offer any value and doesn't answer the question: What makes a website rank high than another website?

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

You really don't get it.

The point was that Page Authority is easily manipulated and that there is no point in focusing on the Page Authority of your own site. It is not going to make it rank any better. It is not a part of the Google algorithm.

 

[SEOPub]

I think it has affected on SEO, more shares, more traffic you will get and your brand name is promoted and known.

Shares, traffic and brand name promotion does not improve rankings.

Why some SEO tools like woorank or other tools counted social networks shares as one of factor to calculate SEO score for websites on their tool, I'm wondering that

Am I right or wrong?

Yes. You are completely wrong. Most SEO tools like WooRank are total pieces of crap. They don't have a clue how to rank anything. They are just giving the market what they want. People believe the BS that social signals help rankings, so they are putting social signals in their tools so that they sell more of them.

There has been exactly zero evidence published anywhere that shows that social signals help rankings. People do not understand the difference between correlation and causation.

 

[elcidofaguy]

elcidofaguy

Well said... I've been saying this for sometime that social signals does not have a direct impact with ranking on the SERPs.... An indirect result of social interaction is that backlinks can arise which does help with ranking on the SERPs... Further does anyone really believe that G would put reliance on third party platforms which it has difficulty getting access such as FB etc... I think not... Also its easy to fake some social signals i.e. likes, tweets and these definitely do nothing... Its got to be genuine social interaction which is great for traffic and you may get some backlinks which helps wrt G's algo...

That said I like social platforms as an alternative means to gaining traffic... Diversifying your business to not rely on G is a great thing....

 

[edsonbuchanan]

I'm not an SEO expert but I would have to agree with SEOpub. I don't social media sharing has any effect on organic google search ranking. I do know that you can drive traffic with social media but as far as seeing it show up in the search engines, I don't think that is how it works.

Now forum posting will show up in the search engines but that's actual content based on the keywords asked inside the post.

 

[denishalaughton]

Google can use signals from its own properties without fear they'll lose access to that information. Because of this I don't think Google is relying on social signals, nor will they for the foreseeable future.

I don't think Google wants to rely on a handful of very large 3rd parties for major aspects of their ranking algorithms.

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Exactly right!

 

[Nytshade]

Nytshade

Major aspect? No one said social signals play a major role in improving rankings! What I said is that it does play a role, not MAJOR!

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

There is zero proof of that. Nobody has ever shown a website ranking on social signals alone. The only thing that people have pointed to is correlation reports. Those reports say that many sites with high rankings have a lot of social signals. What they fail to explain, research, or prove is which came first. Of course websites with high rankings usually have more social signals than low ranking sites. They get more traffic, which will bring more social signals. That does not show that they have high rankings because of the social signals. They likely were ranking well and that brought the social signals.

i do not know why this is so hard to understand.

 

[Nytshade]

OK let me dumb it down for you:

What makes a website rank high than another website?

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

Good quality links are the #1 ranking factor in the algorithm and they will be for a long time to come.

Internal links are extremely powerful and often overlooked.

 

[elcidofaguy]

As for evaluating pages for links and such, I look at a combination of PA, MozRank, and Trust Flow. Mostly though, I am interested in the content of the page, the content of the site, the internal link structure pointing to the page where my link will be, and the external links pointing to the page.

Nice one! That's exactly my approach...

The only thing that matters for a domain to be used for a private network are the quality of the live links. Links that tools like Majestic and Ahrefs show do not tell the whole story. They are great at finding links, but not so great at keeping their database up to date as to whether or not the links still exist today.

Appreciate your point regarding live links... Indeed agree with that! Just to add one should also check robots.txt as some sites deliberately block crawlers such as MOZ, Majestic in order to prevent such metrics appearing on such sites for competitors to use.... I generally make that check when taking a closer look at my competitor sites when certain metrics dont seem to add up...

 

[SEOPub]

SEOPub

I don't bother with checking the robots.txt. Most bots ignore robots.txt. The people that really know what they are doing are blocking the bots through .htaccess or using Spyder Spanker. There is no way to check that.

 

[elcidofaguy]

elcidofaguy

Good point lol... I've been using .htaccess to block bots and spam referral sites... Another one which is not to obvious to detect are 301 redirects, makes sense to block bots when doing that too... Any ideas on how to figure out accurately if sites are using that? Either way looks like we're going off topic.... But I suspect these types of anomalies are much more common than we realize when assessing sites on the SERPs....

 

[elcidofaguy]

I think there is some confusion as to measuring site/page authority.... For one Google will never provide that data... You can call it what you like as some folks refer to that as the mythical "Trust Rank" but for sure it is not PR (Page Rank).... As we cannot see that data which G assigns wrt ranking on the SERPs then we are left with using third party metrics as well as assessing the actual website itself i.e. content/on-page seo/silos etc....

When someone talks about increasing site/page authority in my mind this has nothing to do with increasing MOZ DA/PA values etc.... Its about increasing your rankings on the SERPs... It is in reference to G's hidden data which it derives...

I really think if the SEO community can agree on a common term for Google's actual ranking metric which is hidden from the public then that would avoid such confusion as to someone asking how to increase their website authority on the SERPs as clearly MOZ DA/PA is being confused as to being that which it is clearly not as I mentioned on the thread its the other way around... Third party metrics attempt to better understand/estimate G's algo...

 

[Zubera]

No It Doesn't

It doesn't affect ranking in general terms, but via Social Media you are always able to to get visitors.

 

[elcidofaguy]

To add as I am real curious to hear of other opinions...

I have a suspicion that when gaming the serps with creating backlinks e.g. PBNs, guest posting, buying etc - assuming you know what you are doing lol... that social signals can help disguise that as a means of corroborating that the backlink is worthy and not manipulated if that makes sense... I generally create backlinks in spikes with creating a new post.... funneling social signals to it ... and then add my backlinks covertly but not many - way less than 10% of monthly traffic from organic figures from stats in order to keep under the radar...

During that spike of backlinks - I assume G detects these other signals and thus my suspicion is that social media as well as video marketing can be used as a smoke screen for backlinking activity....

Any how that's the way I'm doing it but my rationale is based on the logic of G detecting signals that it does not necessarily use directly for ranking but at the same time can have an impact to dampening the threshold from spam/manipulation detection with regards to unnatural link building algo detection....

 

[webygeeks]

There is no effect on Ranking of website by sharing on Social Media sites like Facebook, Twitter . Social Media sites increase only Traffic .