Studies showing that social sharing does/doesn't affect rankings?
-
I'm currently researching this area in order to show to a client that social shares aren't as valuable for SEO as they might think. Can anyone point me in the direction of the best studies done on this topic?
Thanks in advance!
-
I hear you loud and clear re. studying different query spaces.
Do we know that in those query spaces where social shares correlate it is not actually down to links i.e can we remove the influence of links from the studies?
-
Thanks Josh. Great video. This would match up with what SearchMetrics concluded in their ranking factors study.
I'm astonished by the number of SEOs that assume social shares are a ranking factor. You've only got to look at Moz's survey to see that people still think so despite no-one (that i've seen) having conclusive evidence.
It kind of feels like a share should help rankings so that might explain Moz's study of SEO's. BUT we all know that a share is a hell of a lot easier to get and much easier to manipulate than even links. If Google arent looking at them I guess this explain why.
-
The video will switch you off social media forever - so be warned.
I see social media impact in creating links, and generally driving traffic to websites. Social media when done well with seo in mind can be beneficial. To my knowledge that is not in dispute. I just find it not as costs effective as content creation and technical.
-
Thanks Zoe!
Moz are careful to point out that their social results are correlation and likely to be because of a link between content that is shared heavily also achieving links (the real cause of good rankings).
i know that the recent Buzzsumo report highlights that this is not necessarilly the case but still...
-
Thanks John, I'll take a look at the video. When you say "social media does have an SEO value" do you mean that you believe that shares directly affect rankings? If so what evidence have you used to come to this conclusion?
-
Make them watch this. This video is what I show them. Not 100% correct as social media does have seo value. But it is an absolute rip snorter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2NUayn2vP0
Hope this assists.
-
Hi,
I'd say Moz' 2015 ranking factors study is great for this, particularly the correlation section. If you scroll to 'Social and Brand Features', there's a graph showing correlations between rankings and shares, broken down by social platform. I've always found this incredibly insightful and useful!
Also the latest Whiteboard Friday, and related Buzzsumo collaboration study, are slightly on a tangent but both very insightful, they investigate any correlation between social shares & backlinks, and touch on the correlations with rankings.
Edit: of course, correlation isn't causation. You might also want to mention this video from Matt Cutts, in which he explains that social signals, like shares, +1s etc, aren't directly factored into algorithms.
I hope this helps! Interested to see anything others might post here too.
Zoe
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
-
Page Rank Metrics Disapearing
Hi Everyone. I keep hearing from different people that googles PAGE RANK , Will soon be eliminated. Has anyone heard anything more about this ? Or is this a myth? This would make it more complex for the average person to rely on DA and TF etc.. Would love to hear from you guys. I actually like the PR rating system. Also have websites more then a year old which are still not showing actual PR yet .Maybe delayed or maybe not. Robert
Algorithm Updates | | Yellow20000 -
How to fix Yahoo/Bing Ranking with hurting great Google ranking
If you have a Top ranking for keyword in Google but for Bing and Yahoo you rank considerably lower how do you balance the desire to rank better in Yahoo/Bing with not wanting to damage your Google ranking? Have people found certain on page SEO tactics help one but damage the other? Does anyone else have great Google rankngs for keywords but Bing/Yahoo are mediocre to poor?
Algorithm Updates | | inhouseninja0 -
Rankings Gone? Have I been effected by the Panda/Penguin Update(s)?
Our site www.alphameasure.com has been online since 2005 and currently has a page rank of 4. The site has always ranked on page one or two of Google for our primary keywords (Employee Satisfaction Survey, Employee Engagement Survey, Employee Surveys). I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but now our site is nowhere to be found. I'm thinking our ranking dropped somewhere in mid to late January? We did use an SEO company in the spring of 2012 that went on a link building campaign for us. They added about 450 inbound links over a three month period. Other than that - nothing has really change on the site. We're getting ready to release a new version of our software that was being re-written during all of 2012, so the timing of losing our rankings is just awful. Any help or ideas is greatly appreciated? Thanks in advance,
Algorithm Updates | | EngagedMetrics
Josh0 -
Difference between Google's link: operator and GWT's links to your sites
I haven't used the Google operator link: for a while, and I noticed that there is a big disparity between the operator "link:" and the GWT's links to your site. I compared these results on a number of websites, my own and competitors, and the difference seem to be the same across the board. Has Google made a recent change with how they display link results via the operator? Could this be an indication that they are clean out backlinks?
Algorithm Updates | | tdawson090 -
The Google/Yahoo Connection
I have been telling myself and clients for a while that you do not need to specially SEO things for different search engines. While I stand by this (staunchly) I can't help but notice how SLOW yahoo is to pick up my SEO updates and rank them as compared to google. Sometimes I see Rank increases within a day or two (or sooner) But Yahoo is still well behind in their caching and calculations.
Algorithm Updates | | TheGrid0 -
Another Domain ranking instead of my Domain
Hi My Domain name is Replicahause.net, 2 weeks ago my server had an outage for 3 days and my rankings dissappeared in google entirely, however i also noticed that when i typed in my domain name "replicahause" or "replicahause.net" , i would see abhishekyadav.com appearing on #1 in google which does a 301 into Replicahause.net I was able to convince the owner of Abhishekyadav to remove the 301 but my site Replicahause.net's Rankings still does not appear to have come back to google, is there something i'm missing here ? We were ranked #1 to #10 for at least 40 keywords, they've just seemed to dissappeard after the server downtime we had and the 301 from AbhishekYadav.com Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | jansimon0 -
If you rank first organically for a keyword, will you rank first for variations?
Hi everyone, Hoping that someone will be able to answer this question for us. If we rank first organically for a keyword, are we safe to assume that we'll rank first (or close to it) for variations of that keyword as well? E.g. If we rank first easily for "Hamilton Island", can we safely assume that we will rank well organically for close variations of that keyword such as "Hamilton Islands", "Hamiltonisland", "Hamilton Island Hotel" due to the fact that "Hamilton Island" is in those keywords? We're deciding which keywords to monitor in SEOmoz and we don't want to waste keywords on very similar terms if we don't have to. Really appreciate any responses! Cheers.
Algorithm Updates | | HamiltonIsland0 -
Was I Kicked Off Google Page One by Panda/Farmer?
Took over this site in March. Got a Panicked call from client Mid-March that all of a sudden keywords that put the site on Page One weren't working. There are still 9 that work, but apparently there were more. A large percentage of the backlinks are from Article Directories and Link Farms. Is this my problem? Also, a large percentage of the 149 pages suffer from keyword stuffing and were obviously written for Search Engines and not people. How much of a difference does that make?
Algorithm Updates | | reeljerc0