Paid likes?
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Has anyone used paid likes for Google +, Facebook, etc. for liking articles, videos, etc. on your own sites?
Is this a safe, SEO practice?
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I bought a few facebook likes and it was a waste of money. Users who "liked" my page were fake... I wasn't expecting much from these likes and I did it because I wanted to make my brand new fb page more likeable. You need to start somewhere, right? No one wants to be the first person to "like".
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Argumentum ad populum - Latin for "appeal to the people". It is a fallacious argument that concludes a proposition to be true because many or most people believe it.
"Brand X vacuum cleaners are the country's leading brand; so buy Brand X vacuum cleaners."
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The only benefit I can see is to make a Facebook page (Google+, etc.) look more popular than it is. If I see a business whose Facebook page has only 45 likes then I'm not as likely to like them. But if they've got several thousand then I subconsciously think, "Hmmm...if this many people like them then they must put good stuff on their facebook page."
Just for fun I bought a thing on fiverr where someone promised to give me more likes by posting my page on their facebook fan page. They claimed to belong to a popular band with tens of thousands of fans. Well, the next day I got 16 extra likes all from people's whose names I couldn't pronounce. When I checked out those fans they were obviously fake accounts that were created just to boost like numbers.
Does it help SEO? No. I do believe that likes on a post can influence your seo. But Google is not dumb. If they see that I wrote a post that is getting hundreds of likes from around the world then they likely will promote my post a little more. But, I think they can tell if I'm getting hundreds of likes from paid sources. If I could look at the Facebook likes I got and automatically tell that they were spam accounts, I'm sure the algo can figure that out as well.
I personally don't think that having extra likes to your Facebook page is going to do anything for your SEO. But, if you have likes that are earned, then this indirectly helps. For example, when I publish an article on my site, I post it to my facebook page. If I have thousands of fans then that is a lot of people who can spread the word about my article.
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Excellent answers, you both touched on great points which I have always believed in.
If you have something worth Liking / +1 'ing / Re-tweeting, people will do it for you. Your focus should be to deliver the best possible content, features, products, service and let your customers / readers do the rest. Trying to manipulate the system buy throwing money at it won't be good in the long run.
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You may be missing the point of online recomendations. It's to increase referral traffic. Buying likes and +1's will most likely be done by a spam farm and nobody hears their screams.
Also, Google+ is a Google product, and you can bet they'll be able to spot the 'user farms' that may spring up due to the popularity of '+1 buying'.
If content is worth sharing, then users will share. If not, then might be worth trying to figure out what sort of content users will share.
In my opinion, this is not a safe, nor reliable, SEO practice.
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Never done it, but I would say no.
The benefits of Social, in my opinion do not come from a one time like or one time + It is the continuation of creating a genuine following that is niche related and active in your community.
Of course like most things in Search Engine Land, it could greatly help you until Google or Facebook picks up on the footprint. So I guess it is a gamble really. One that I personally would never take cause what benefits are you going to get from a bunch of irrelevant one time likes in the social sphere from accounts that are probably loners, or already on the spam radar?
I guess if you use it as a "starter" for a really great infographic, video or piece of content, it might help with initial exposure, then the REAL signals may carry you but still in my opinion it is a gamble and probably a waste of money that could be put into a real strategy instead of a shortcut.
w00t!
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