What Social Signals will mean for SEO in 2016
We are hardly surprised to hear what social signals will mean for SEO this years. When reading Neil Patel’s predictions for 2016 SEO Factors, Social Signals come in at the top of the list. How can anyone be surprised, SERIOUSLY! I understand that many SEO’s are still building links but hey, wake up!
We are no longer in 2006, this is the world of semantic search. With Google’s algorithm driven by AI and machine learning what else has as much activity and human engagement than social media. Today Google is ready to say that if a company has no commitment to social media then they have no commitment to their clients, ok this could be pushing it, yet this is what’s going on. Social signals are natural and voluntary for the most part.
Why Social Signals are the future of SEO?
Social signals are the real deal so why wouldn’t Google gravitate towards true authentic engagement of active crowds of people interacting on business and personal levels.
Remember, Google has been fooled for over a decade with phony back-links that could be 100% fabricated by skillful SEO’s. How does this leave Google protecting it investment? It doesn’t it is just the best that they had until Semantic search and AI. So as backlinks still hold much of the weight in ranking on the SERP, here comes Social signals.
Sharing Signals are what Google is looking for
These signals consist of shares, pin’s and reshares. These all amount to the same thing, people or businesses of all different influential levels sharing your content to their audience. This sounds simple yet to Google it is a game changer.
Picture this, say that you have been active on your Twitter account for many years and you have built yourself an audience of 20,000 followers. Awesome this means that you have 20,000 loyal people that enjoy your content and this is considered your audience people that you have proven time and time again that you provide value in a certain vertical that they enjoy.
It takes years to build an audience yet minutes to lose, remember!
This audience is not built by campaigns or buying people, these are strictly people captured by value and hard work. This is what Google finds authentic. Audiences take forever to build yet days to abolish, ill explain – If I built an audience over the years telling them the in’s and out’s of SEO then one week I start sharing irrelevancy like deals at the local grocery store or promotions from a local car dealer my audience will be gone. So doesn’t that mean that once I built an audience and become an influencer that I will ONLY share valuable content? That answer is yes!
This is where Social signals become interesting to Google and it’s ranking factors since you can’t pay someone to solicit their audience with topics that don’t interest them. Stay tuned for some upcoming posts where I explain how to take advantage of your audience, whoa, in a good way! That sounded awful, lol.
