Social signals, how important are they?

[net_zen]

I keep reading about how important having your links liked, upvoted - or whatever the system is called on each social platform - is for your rankings. When thinking about it I can understand why, having all those 'signals' around your content must mean it's good content so Search Engines feed more people towards it. Up until now I've only been using some WordPress plugins to place share buttons beneath my content but I'm considering buying likes/shares to test things out.

 

[Kleineganz]

I don't understand the concept of "buying" likes or shares. To me that would just mess up my stats and make it a pain to analyze what people really liked.

 

[net_zen]

That's true, yes. By buying I simply want to test the impact of those shares/likes on my rankings and on the traffic received from the main Search Engines. I don't want those shares (social signals) to bring me traffic from the social platform they are made on, I want to use them to look good in the eyes of search engines and see what happens.

 

[xTinx]

If you buy likes or shares, it takes away the integrity of your marketing efforts. Moreover, you can't guarantee the authenticity of these likes or shares. Some of them may be generated by spammy accounts and bring down the value of your SEO. Moreover, just because a particular content doesn't have a lot of likes or shares does not mean it's not effective at all. For all you know, it has better traffic count than sites with a lot of bought likes or shares.

 

[lludawg]

Facebook has been really good at hurting businesses that buy likes. Every time you post something on your Facebook page, only about 20% of your fans see the post. If your page is filled with fake fans, your post may only go to those fake accounts and never reach your real, interested fans.

 

[Rainman]

I keep reading about how important having your links liked, upvoted - or whatever the system is called on each social platform - is for your rankings.

Don't bother buying likes or anything of that nature. Listen to what Matt Cutts says;

http://searchengineland.com/googles...ike-any-other-web-page-on-the-internet-182370

Google’s Matt Cutts: We Don’t Use Twitter Or Facebook Social Signals To Rank Pages

Likes, shares and so on are an indication that your content is good. When your content is shared, tweeted or liked, it means that people find it useful/interesting/etc. It's how you should gauge the quality of your content. Just focus on creating the sort of content which can be shared, and I'm sure once people start noticing how good the content is they'll naturally start sharing it, linking back to it and so on. Google will notice all that activity and reward you with good rankings in the SERPs.

 

[proxynvpn]

Hi

I think it depends on what espectations you have for your business,but on the long run fake likes will only hurt your business