Social Shares And Link Building
The Social Web
As the web has become more social and websites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Quora are demonstrating the massive value that social sharing can provide, Google has had to switch up their game a little bit. Relying solely on links, anchor text, and link quality was no longer going to be a viable strategy for the company if they wanted to continue their dominance in the search engines. People were starting to trust retweets from influential people, or a Facebook share from a trusted friend, more than Google’s search results.
It’s time to Get Social!
What does this mean for the enterprising SEO? It means that you need to get on top of social sharing and learn how to really master the world of social media. Social media gets blasted online and in traditional media as a way for people to look busy but not actually be accomplishing anything. Unfortunately, that is true for many who use it, but it doesn’t have to be true for you. All you need to do is understand the underlying ecosystem online and you’ll be able to use it to your advantage while contributing a lot of value to the community as a whole
Social Shares are not created Equal
The first thing you need to understand is that not all social shares are the same. If you’re working for a client or building a website in the gardening niche, you’re going to get lot less value from a single share if it comes from a friend who has a small gardening blog as opposed to a famous gardening author who has 40,000 followers on Twitter.
Google is trying their hardest to identify the “major influencers” in every niche, so they can see what content these people share. Because they are considered the go-to voice in the industry, Google will by default give the links that they share with their followers a lot more credibility. After all, when your name is directly tied to your audience, the last thing you’re going to do is share something that is of little to no value. It’s a great way for Google to be very confident in the trust levels that they should assign to any particular link.
Social Shares + Link Building = Online Success
This isn’t to say that link building is dead. Instead, it should be supplemented by really understanding the world of social media and learning how to connect to major influences and entice them to share your stories.
Latest posts by Marcela De Vivo (see all)
- The Evolution of Data: Creating Intent-Led Digital Strategies - 29 January, 2019
- Productive Things To Do When You Are a Freelancer Job-Hunting - 18 July, 2018
- What KPIs Should I be Using to Measure my SEO Campaign - 21 July, 2017