Do social signals affect SEO and visibility in search?

It’s rare to see a digital marketing campaign that doesn’t include both SEO and social media strategies. They go hand in hand and are inextricably linked. But, just how much do social media signals influence SEO and visibility in search? If you tweet a lot and have thousands (or even millions) of followers, will you rank higher in Google?

In this blog post, I’ll break down my thoughts on the interplay between social signals and search.

Ever since the rise of today’s social media giants – Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – marketers have been trying to figure out whether social signals play a role in a site’s visibility and rankings. When pressed with this age-old question, Google’s top brass (including Matt Cutts, former head of web spam) vehemently denied that social signals have any influence on search visibility. On the flip side, digital marketing stalwarts, like Moz suggest that there is a connection between strong social signals and a solid visibility in search.

So what's the conclusion? Do social signals make your SEO stronger or not?

Think about how many social media posts there are every day. According to Brandwatch, there are 500 million tweets sent and 1.3 pieces of content shared on Facebook every day. Google can’t possibly index all of that content. However, it is notable that a few years ago, Twitter and Google struck a partnership deal which gave Google access to Twitter’s firehose. With this access, Google can see every tweet. This doesn’t mean, however, that Google indexes all tweets.

Here are some of ArcStone’s tweets that are currently indexed in Google.

Google has definitely gotten more sophisticated over the last couple of years, about indexing tweets, but it’s not completely there yet. Since Google is only seeing ‘some’ data, their snapshot is incomplete.

Compounding the issue further is the notion that social sites like Twitter and Facebook tend to be more volatile than other types of web content. One tweet could spike shares or it could elicit thousands of unfollows. Simply put, there are more fluctuations on social sites. These drastic fluctuations make it extremely difficult for Google to establish how trustworthy the social signals are and to be confident enough in the data to use it for SEO.

But, what about all of the SEO metric studies that show social signals as an influencing factor in visibility? Does correlation equal causation?

More likely it's that websites that have valuable content, a better user experience, a higher domain authority and a better overall performance also tend to have higher engagement on social sites and a defined social strategy.

Concluding ideas:

Social signals support your SEO practice but they aren’t a ranking factor. Let’s look at an example.

Let’s say that you tweet a link to a post on your blog.

Your tweet piques interest and some of your followers click on your link. Result = High click-through rates can help you shape your content strategy (i.e. you can write about topics your audience cares about).

Some of your followers find value in your post and go on to read other blog posts or pages on your website. Result = Good quality engagement metrics such as time of site and pageviews.

A couple of people find your post so interesting that they link to your piece of content. Result = More backlinks and citations for you.

These factors – valuable content, engaged users and quality backlinks – strengthen your domain and authority. A strong domain authority does positively influence your visibility in search.

A strong social media strategy can undoubtedly support and strengthen your SEO, but social signals alone won’t get you in the top results. Social signals won’t be a short-term ‘shot in the arm’ fix for your SEO initiatives, however a solid social strategy will pay off in the long run.