Anyone seen REAL proof that White Hat & Social Signals leads to rankings ?
-
Trying to be a good, clean SEO, I have been spending the last two and a half years focusing a lot on building up solid social communities on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest and YouTube.
Back when I began doing this, I believed that old school link-building was on its way out, and that, to stay on the 'clean', White Hat side of Google, social was the way to go for future success in organic search.
But my main competitor is STILL buying links left and right, and has absolutely no social media following...and he's kicking my butt more and more in the rankings. And I seem to be losing out with my strategy.
So I would really like to know: have any of you experienced proof, first hand, that you can win with SEO by focusing on social signals, and by letting NATURAL, earned links pretty much take care of themselves, by trying to create good content?
Because I am FRUSTRATED.
I thought I was being one of the good guys. I thought I was going the safer, risk-free way to success. And I knew it would take me longer to become successful this way...but it's been YEARS now, and I still don't see any signs of it happening any time soon !
-
Of course we've seen results from whitehat SEO. That's not to say that blackhat SEO doesn't work, too. Afterall, who would take such a risk if it didn't work...but it is a big risk. Many sites using blackhat techniques wake up one morning to find their site's rankings are in the toilet or worse.
The rest of the advice that's been offered is good. Create truly good content that's valuable or entertaining and build up your audience. Whitehat SEO does work; however, Whitehat SEO with unoriginal, boring content, doesn't work so well. And like SEO 5 Team said, if you know your competition is violating the guidelines, report them. Beyond just the small business reporting, you can actually submit a spam report:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en
Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com -
Agree with EGOL in regards paying attention to your content first and foremost.
That being said, you might want to have a quick look at the 2013 ranking survey here: http://moz.com/blog/ranking-factors-2013. Still a lot of factors in play of which social is only one.
-
You may want to exercise the option of reporting your site to Google so they can take a closer look at the search results associated with your site.
-
I have seen proof that white hat SEO leads to rankings.
I have not seen proof that Social Signals alone will lead to rankings. I agree with EGOL - you should focus your attention on the quality of the content, and possibly more white-hat link building, rather than going ALL-IN on social.
-
So... are you working hard to improve and increase the content offerings of your website or are you spending all of your time trying to build a fire on social media?
If I want my website to take off I spend my time working on content to build a fire there... and if I am doing a great job of that the people who visit the website spread the word about my content on social media with zero work from me. If that isn't happening then maybe the content is less than inspiring or the topics are chest-thumping promos that nobody cares about.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to rank videos in YouTube higher
I have a question regarding the ranking of YouTube videos. What are the ranking factors and how we can use them in our favor to rank our videos higher in search results within YouTube.
Social Media | | Sakshamk117ue0 -
Facebook Business Manager - Assigning Roles & Billing
In the past, we assigned roles and managed business Facebook pages by sharing admin access with an individual account. However, we encountered an issue with this, as when it came to advertising, billing was processed under that individual account and not the account of the actual business Facebook page. To resolve this, I have begun setting up a Business Facebook Manager account. However, need some guidance. I have claimed access to a business Facebook page and assigned a person to manage this page. By doing this, I can now see that the assigned person has the ability to make posts on that page and to create and manage Ads. Two things I need clarification on however: When advertising is conducted, is it billed to the credit card details for the Business Page? (And not the billing details of the individual it was assigned to) It seems that the assigned person cannot boost a post? Am I missing something here? Thanks for your help!
Social Media | | Gavo0 -
Article previews on social media not showing
Hi there, hoping for some help. I have a hunch but I can't be sure. Whenever I go to publish a link on social media, I no longer see previews with the featured image or relevant meta. We have changed servers lately so I think maybe somethign has gone wrong with OpenGraph? Happens on Facebook and LinkedIn.
Social Media | | Whittie0 -
Does social work for e-commerce?
So, social these days is hot. But is there anyone who can report some figure about a real, documented, analytically documented, success in using social for e-commerce? There's a lot of presentations like this one saying it's great, it's a big impact, etc... But how? And what about figures of sales, or traffic, or something you can measure... Which had a significant spike thanks to a social network attempt? I am asking because I tried myself to use facebook for e-commerce, and we tried a lot: like and share buttons on content (pointing to the url of the content) like and share button on homepage (linked to the fan page) regular (three times a day) content being published on fanpage, original quality content (guidelines on products, independent test), well crafted (copy including catchy questions), original images designed by a graphic designer following all facebook guideline (smiling people, plain background) facebook ad campaign to increase likes (target audience = fans of brands sold) facebook ad remarketing facebook integration on the website publishing (with user consent) product reviews, buying action, website reviews, on their wall/user-feed (all with dynamically generated images showing happy smiling faces, product bought and catchy phrase) After 6 months and around 15k euro spent the result is: above 10k likes on fanpage above 1k likes on content pages orders originated by fan page negligible (less than 10) orders originated by facebook ads negligible (less than 80 with a coverage of 2.5M users, declining through time with 75% of the orders in the first two months and less than 5 on the sixth month) orders originated by remarketing negligible (less than 10 with a coverage of 7k users) orders originated by customer reviews... so and so... 8 orders out of 300 customer reviews (coverage is unknown but 15 out of 300 would be a decent 2.5% CR even with just 300 users seeing the reviews) My conclusion is either we are really dumb at using social for e-commerce, or we wasted our time... Anyone had some experience to share?
Social Media | | max.favilli1 -
Did anyone's +1s disappear?
I recently noticed that all the plus ones on our company Google+ page disappeared. Now there's only Followers and Views. Does anyone know what happens to the plus ones?
Social Media | | TMI.com0 -
Social media unclarities
Dear community, I've tried to find the answer in the Q&A but without any succes. www.facebook.com/onlinedesignmeubel.nl is our facebook page for our webshop. We have 563 likes, but in opensiteexplorer we only have 1 FB like. It is most likely an easy question, but i couldn't find the answer. My question is how the opensiteexplorer only found 1 like? How does this work exactly? Best regards, Martin
Social Media | | Onlinedesignmeubel0 -
Social Media Gurus... What would you do, your industry has no presence?
You are tasked with creating a Facebook page for an industry which has a distinct lack of social media presence. During your research for your industry or client you find none of their competitors are using social media to any large degree. Reviewing the whys, you find that the demographics of people using Social Media outlets like, Facebook, Twitter, Pin Interest, and LinkedIn do not really fit with the industry. Do you view this as a great opportunity for your company / client and push forward with creating a Social Media presence? Or, do you inform your company / client based on your research, social media isn't a viable use of time or money? Examples: Plastic Manufacturing
Social Media | | donford
Industrial Laundry
Tractor Trailer Wholesale
Copper Mining Equipment I am interested in how the guru's handle clients / companies that don't necessarily fit the mold of social media, but ask and are willing to pay you to make it happen for them. I am hoping this to be a good discussion as I don't see any right or wrongs in these situations. What would you do?0 -
Open Site Exporer Social Media Data Accuracy. Anyone notice this?
On my homepage http://www.shipoverseas.com, I have 142 FB Likes, 9 Tweets, 3 +1s. In OSE it shows, FB Likes 86, Tweets 4, and 3 +1s. Does anyone know why there is a discrepancy? I am using AddThis.
Social Media | | Francisco_Meza0
