What Are Social Signals And What Do They Mean For Your SEO?

With the importance of search engine optimization continuing to grow on a daily basis (thanks to the overwhelming amount of online competition from all corners of the globe), smart and savvy business owners and online entrepreneurs are trying to increase their search engine rankings through any means possible.
At the same time, the major search engine networks (Google, Yahoo, and Bing) have also been making adjustments to their search engine algorithms – changing the criteria for ranking your page (or dropping it off the face of the earth into the back waters of those same rankings) at your regular rates. This means that what works today to shoot you to the top of the major search engines may be the exact same thing that drops YouTube page 50 one of those same results tomorrow.
However, search engine optimization experts have been discovering a number of foundational elements to the search engine algorithms that continue to remain the same throughout all of the different changes and shifts – and one of them happens to be social signals and their impact on search engine optimization.

What exactly are social signals?

At first blush, social signals seems like terminology better suited to the stock market or the foreign exchange investment world. But it’s this kind of terminology that turns off more and more people to search engine optimization, when really the “meat and potatoes” behind social signals is relatively simple and straightforward to grasp.
Social signals are just the amount of Facebook likes, Facebook shares, Facebook comments, Twitter retweets, and other social interaction from real people all over the world with your content or information – basically a “voting system” for content that is actually valuable.
And while it’s been almost 3 years since major search engine optimization experts first spoke about the potential for social signals to impact search engine rankings, we’re still trying to figure out exactly how much weight they really have, how best to use them, and how to make sure that this technology and strategy stays relevant for years to come.

How do social signals impact your organic search engine optimization?

The first reason that social signals are important to building your search engine optimization platform is because of the fact that they create new incoming links to your content.
Not only does this help to expose your content and information to more and more people in the online environment, but it also creates a web of “link juice” that you can rely on to catch the eye of search engine spiders and crawlers to improve your organic rankings. Thats why many webmasters have also installed social bookmark bars to aid in people liking or sharing their pages.
Secondly, search engine algorithms have been adjusted to account for the “votes of confidence” that your content or web properties receive from real people using social media. This means that the number of people that like your page on Facebook, share your Facebook content, follow you on twitter, mention your name or link to your website through social media, or are included in your “circles” on Google+ will account for a tremendous amount of influence in the search engine rankings. Much of this research is anecdotal in nature, but even Matt Cutts (a search engine engineer at Google) has stated that social signals have a tremendous impact on overall organic rankings.

Is it worth spending time trying to focus on mastering social signals moving forward?

In a word: absolutely.
Social media is a major part of the web right now, and almost all websites have one form or another of interaction with their visitors throughout the social media arena. To ignore the social signals is to give up a tremendous boost an advantage to your competition, and when we’re talking about the most competitive business environment in human history you simply cannot survive for very long giving it up.
More and more people are relying on social media as opposed to the traditional search engine to get the information, recommendations, and news that they are looking for – and without implementing a social media plan and relying on social signals you are going to find yourself behind the curve. Again, it’s all about building your web presence in the way that is most easily available to your marketplace – and we all understand that the web is becoming more and more social on a daily basis.

What does the future hold in regard to social signals and search engine optimization?

With all of the shifts and changes that happen around the social media world and the search engine optimization landscape, it’s nearly impossible to predict exactly what’s going to happen in the future. However, it’s not difficult to imagine that social media and social signals will continue to grow in popularity and importance – meaning that you need to get started with a real and reliable social media plan just as soon as humanly possible.
Not only will you be able to directly influence your organic search rankings by tapping into the power of social signals, but you’ll also be able to create a more potent and influential brand by communicating directly with your customers and marketplace – a win-win situation if there ever was one.