Seems to me that the most important thing you can do in social media these days is be important.
In keeping with my determination to embrace this vast and still burgeoning medium, I’ve been doing a lot of reading, as is my wont, and it seems clear that the majority opinion is that while social signals might not be a ranking factor yet, they not only soon will be, but are already capable of enhancing your SEO. Here’s an article on Memeburn about it.
And here’s a very convincing one from SearchEngineLand on the reasoning behind the idea that it will soon be even more important, and one from Moz about using social signals for SEO.
Social Signals & SEO
What does it mean? It means that at some point, having your content and your posts shared, commented on, liked, +1’d etc. etc.will directly affect how you rank in the SERPs. You can see the logic…originally it stemmed from the idea that the more people saw and shared your stuff, the more links you would have pointing back to it, which was good for your ranking.
Now, with an apparent move away from links (although not yet a complete one…links are still important), and a focus on content (again) and things like authorship, the shares are apparently going to be important for their own sake, and not just the sake of a credible link back to your site.
And the more authoritative and influential the people who engage with your content are, the more valuable that engagement may be. (Refer back to the SearchEngineLand article.)
Of course, it also means that SEO’s will be all over the social platforms even more. Not directly perhaps, but their strategies will certainly be having an effect on the content of social media. To my mind, that brings its own problems. Having SEO’s all over the ‘net ended up not being that great in the past.
Hell, that’s part of the reason that Google is trying to move away from links and keywords in the first place.
Quality Vs. Quantity
Now from what I can see so far, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you need tens of thousands of followers. (Although no doubt there are people out there right now still buying followers and likes and +1’s.)
The consensus seems to be that quality of engagement will count for a lot more than simple quantity. But it’s clear that the idea of “influencers” is really taking off. And again, it makes sense in many ways.
One thing I definitely see coming out of this is the absolute reinforcement of the idea that SEO is a long term strategy. You can’t build up a meaningful following of engaged authorities overnight. If this sort of strategy starts to rule SEO, then we’re looking at months, maybe years, in order to get lasting results. And I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.
Pro’s & Con’s
Well, seems the first pro is that we can get away from dubious links. Another is the refocus on great content (subjective though that is). I’ve long wished content could be the only indicator, except machines are lousy at figuring out what’s good and what’s not. (Hummingbird might change this somewhat, although it may rely at least partly on these social signals to do so.)
On the down-side, (and this is what I really do worry about), we might drag all our old patterns and habits over to a nice new platform. Ok, it’s not that new. And you could argue that we’ve already done it while we were trying to figure this social thing out in the first place.
But if social is the next big SEO game, we might end up inundating the social platforms with the social equivalent of 500 word articles with a keyword density (remember that?) of 3%. Except this time it will be a glut of “10 ways to make social media work for you” or “How to create shareable content in 5 easy steps.”
There’s no doubt that will happen. It’s already happening. With good luck, we’ll strike a happy medium. With bad luck, we’ll muddle along until the ranking signals change again. But I’d hate to see social become the new Google dance-floor.
In The End…
Leveraging social media requires commitment, whatever your eventual purpose. And thanks to the recent changes, it looks like faking it is no longer going to be a viable way of getting any kind of decent results. (Which I can only see as a good thing from several points of view.) (Although it isn’t going to stop people from trying.
The simple fact is that I believe not every business is suited to social media. Either in terms of the business model itself, or in terms of that commitment I mentioned a moment ago. If you’re going to be out there, you have to be out there. And if you really want to leverage social media for the benefit of your business, then you’ll need to be as dedicated to social as you are to the rest of your business.
Don’t see it as a quick fix, or a magic sales-producing bullet. That’s not what it is, and it’s not how it works.