Why you need to concern yourself with social signals over backlinks in 2014

We all know that Google includes social signals in its ranking algorithm. Having Google +1s, Facebook shares, and Twitter tweets for your pages will help them rank.

But I don't think any of you really realise how important they're becoming in the coming future.

Look at Google's original ranking algorithm. When a site owner created a backlink to a different site, they were casting a positive vote for that different site.

But now with SEO, we can very easily create non-genuine blog network links in minutes. So the backlink isn't as 'true' a vote as it used to be.

With social networks, the whole game changes.

A link created by a user with a social share on Facebook, Twitter, or Google Plus, is a genuine positive vote for a page. More importantly, it's by an everyday user of the web, not a webmaster.

A Facebook share, a Twitter tweet, or a Google +1 is a 21st-century, democratic, positive vote for a page. And Google knows and uses that.

You only have to look at Matthew Woodward's zero link-building experiment, which purely focused on social signals and quality content, to see how true this is.

Alright Baldonius, you've had your rant. How can I use this to help my site's rankings?

Great questions. There are two ways you can go about this:

1. Making quality content and sharing it yourself on forums and social media to encourage others to share it
2. Paying for shares, tweets, etc. on Fiverr
3. Using free social exchange websites like AddMeFast

While I try hard to do 1., I also like to use AddMeFast over Fiverr, as this is much more of self-service pick-n-mix style of social signals buying.

What I personally do is get at least a hundred Facebook shares and at least 50 Twitter tweets. But I will never buy Google +1s, because Google can obviously track the origin of these.

Remember guys that Google cannot track the origin of Facebook and Twitter sharing signals, only the raw numbers of them for individual pages. For Google +1s, you will just have to get these organically.

So there you have it guys, I hope you found this informative. I expect many of you will probably disagree with this post, but then this'll just make me smile

 

I would agree with number 1. But number 2 and 3? Man, are you crazy?

However, it is a good thing you follow Matt. He is a great guy. I had an amazing interview with him and his zero link building experiment is really awesome.

He does share some valuable informations and you can take his popular tutorials for example. Just by watching his videos on Youtube, you could learn a lot.

However, point is, you can create quality site without building backlinks. Like Matt did. But smarter thing to do would be to build baclinks. I can bet that it is twice as fast and safer.

 

Yeah the lesson to take from the zero link building experiment is that new SEOs just get obsessed with backlinks when it's only part of Google's ranking algorithm.

And you're right on your last point too. You can build a good blog network in a day and rank your site quickly, while simultaneously providing content that helps users.