Does social networking affect search rankings? Yes, but maybe not the same way you think. This article will clarify the relationship between social networking and SEO.
The year 2014, Matt Cutts said: “Google does not use signals like LIKE from Facebook and FOLLOW on Twitter in search ranking algorithms.” we need to clarify this!
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIAL NETWORK AND SEO
According to Moz’s research findings on search rankings, pages that have more interactivity on social networks are likely to be ranked higher. Does this mean there must be some kind of connection between social networks and search engines?
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1. QUALITY OF THE SOCIAL NETWORK
Prior to 2012, backlinks were a key element used by Google to rank websites but were overused, seriously compromising search rankings. Google developed algorithm “Google Penguin” in 2012 to solve this problem. Currently, the backlink is still one of the important factors affect the ranking of the site, but google has selected high-quality backlinks to evaluate the website. Backlink not related to the topic of website, backlink spam … will bring you the penalty from google
Likewise, to avoid social networking being abused as the backlink, Google is very careful about social networking signals. This quality factor with each social network has the different basis for evaluation, such as Facebook or Twitter based on the amount of like, comment, retweet … Google Plus based on the + 1’s, comment, reshare. However, the “likes, comments or shares” values are data owned by different social networks – does not belong Google.
The relationships on social networking are constantly changing and can easily be “disappeared” when the user deletes, hides … Also, humans can easily impact to change these indicators, so if Using these indicators directly in the ranking algorithm is not objective. So the social network indicators are meaningless? No, but it depends on many other factors as well.
3. MEANING OF INDICATORS ON SOCIAL NETWORKING
Indicators on the social network can change constantly (seconds, minutes, days …), but what Googlebot collects is only calculated at the time it visits. Google Bot constantly working, saying nothing to keep track of a particular audience so it will take some time before it returns. It does not spend time tracking a particular object, so it will take some time before it comes back to collecting new data. After many visits, it will have a graph reflecting the change of the indicators like the number of likes, comments, sharing, tracking, etc. That is the basis for Google to consider the level of credibility against with a website, fanpage or a specific profile.
However, it is difficult for Google to verify the identity of those on different social networks because the social networks themselves do not allow Google to interfere too deeply with their data.
Although Google’s algorithms are very intelligent, it’s impossible to tell if an account nickname William Sheller on Facebook is the same person whose account is nickname William Sheller on Google Plus. That’s why it took Google so much time to evaluate and improve the credibility of a particular audience on social networks.
Many people mistakenly think that when they share their site on social networks there will be many benefits for they website. That thought is wrong, you can not do that without base . You should analyze a bit, when sharing your website on social networking, you can get what?
- Someone like, comment, share, …
- Someone clicked to access the site (with traffic)
- Someone know your brand
As mentioned above, social media indicators can good, increasing Google’s credibility, but if the like a lot, comment a lot, share a lot without (or very little) People click to visit the website. That is meaningless. Or a lot of people visit the site, but they just browse in just a few short seconds and then shut down, resulting in bounce rates and low on website time, which will also reduce the quality of the site. Also, I want to send a warning to you that should not think of the black hat trick to get more like, get more traffic. It will make your brand look worse in the eyes of the user, maybe someday someone will find your site but do not click on it just because the “brand is too impressive”.
All that “SEO experts” say is only relative: it may be the result of research, experimentation, observation, and aggregation. Therefore, you should not absolutely trust what they learn from them, you need know how to apply your experience to get the most accurate answer.
Hope this article helps you understand the value of Social Media and know how to manipulate the benefits it brings. Social Media definitely has an impact on a site’s ranking on search engines but is indirect, not direct.
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