Social Signals Inquiry Regarding Competitor
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There is a competitor in my sites industry, and per various tools like opensitexplorer, quicksprout, and searchmetrics, they have an evenly amount of massive (100k+ per page) facebook social signals (likes, shares, comments) to around 25-50 of their top pages on their site.
They have no social media presence in terms of a fan page, and they rank on the first page for almost every single keyword that is niche related.
How could it be possible to naturally have the same number of facebook social signals to all of your top pages?
What have they done to even accomplish this, and is it only a matter of time before Google recognizes the black hat tactics they've put in place to manipulate the search engines?
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Since it is shares and likes in a matching number for each page it sounds like the probably bought a service from a site like Fiverr to give them a certain amount of shares, follows, re-tweets, etc. They could also be using a program like Synnd to automatically get social shares.
Either way, I wouldn't spend much time worrying about it.
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Without much more information, I can only say that Google isn't likely to ban a site manipulating signals they don't appear to value. Keep checking on the organic side.
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Id prefer to keep the competitor and industry confidential. These aren't followers that they have, it's shares likes and comments to their top pages on their site. The same total number of these signals are going to each top page per ose and search metrics.
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This is really broad. Can you give me the industry? How about the competitor?
Google 'dialed down' 'social signals' a couple years ago. Social is almost nil if all they're doing is buying followers. You're far more likely to find an answer on the organic side.
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