What is a Social Signal?
Social media activity is not an important issue for website owner businesses alone, the important issue is the outcome that occurs after these activities and we call it the social signal or social media signal. But what is a Social Signal?
Social Signal, or social networking signal, helps us to significantly increase the effectiveness of our digital marketing campaigns, but also inadvertently has a positive effect on improving the SEO of the site and increasing the power of its content; An issue that has not been taken so seriously, but can take our site SEO a few steps forward in an incredible way!
If you are interested in the topic and would like to stay with us in the continuation of this article, we have a surprise for you! In addition to knowing the social signal, at the end of this article, you will learn 7 secret ways to improve the social signal of social networks and improve the ranking of your site. So join us before it’s too late.
What is a Social Signal?
Definition of social signal or social signal of social networks in simple language, ie visits, likes and shares of our content by users; But in the SEO world literature, this definition is a little more complicated.
In the world of SEO, Social Signal means users interacting with the content of our page on social networks. Positive and constructive interaction that leads to a pleasant user experience for them and improves our position in the SERP results. But why does this happen? How important is the content of our social networks to Google?
Google’s and’s search engine views on social media social signal
In answer to the previous question, we must say that Google and other search engines use social media signal as an indicator to evaluate the quality, value and user-friendliness of content.
Of course, Google has not officially announced this issue, but recent updates to Google algorithms have proven in practice that the quality of content, freshness, credibility, its relevance to the user’s search and backlinks are important ranking factors.
The more users interact with our posts on social media and the more they share it, the more Google perceives that our content is relevant, credible and high quality, so it follows the links of that post and our site’s content has a chance to be seen. increase. A real example of this can be seen in the ranking of the social network page of some businesses, just like the image below, where an Instagram page is ranked in the first 3 pages. This means that SEO and social signal are related.
What effect does social signal have on SEO?
To answer this question, we must take a step back; That is where Social Signal reports to search engines.
The goal of search engines is to provide quality content and improve the user experience of search. When social media signals tell search engines which content is relevant, popular, and trustworthy, search engines and Google evaluate that content based on ranking factors. This is exactly what we call the importance of Social Signal in SEO, which can increase the organic search engine ranking (SEO) of our site.
The high number of likes, shares and views of a post tells Google that this content has met the needs of users. As a result, the indirect effect of increasing the natural click-through rate of the site or the increase of CTR, backlinks and social posts with a high percentage of interaction, affects the SEO and ranking of our site on the Google results page. In fact, if we want to be much more concise, the social signal of social networks:
- Increase online traffic, brand awareness and organic site traffic.
- They create new backlinks and inputs for the site.
- They give our content credibility and build the trust of Google and new users.
If you would like to read more about the impact of these factors on site SEO, we suggest you review the article ” External SEO ” at the appropriate time.
The best social networks to get Social Signal
Most of us have a page on at least one social network and we know most of them. But not all of these channels are ideal for receiving social signals. Experience has shown that the social networks we name have a greater and better impact to get a strong social signal:
- Facebook; Like, comment and share content
- Twitter; Likes, retweets, quotes and conversations
- Pinterest; Pins, hits and comments
- LinkedIn; Articles, links and references
- Instagram; New followers, comments and programs
- YouTube; Hits, links and comments
7 clever solutions to strengthen the social signal of social networks
Now that we are familiar with the definition of Social Signal and its importance in site SEO, it is time to introduce 7 clever and powerful solutions to strengthen the site’s social signal.
Examine the psychology of content sharing on social media
Recently, the New York Times published the results of a study in which people were asked, “What exactly motivates you to share content on social media?”
The most important reasons given by the people were as follows:
- To support an event or cause (84%)
- Share on Stay Connected (74%)
- Aiming for self-actualization (69%)
- To define their own characteristics (68%)
- Entertainment (49%)
If we want to consider increasing our content sharing on social networks as one of the main KPIs of content strategy, examining the main motivations of people to share attractive content will be a smart and powerful move to attract maximum social signal.
2. Choose the best Prime Times
The Prime Times is said to be the most valuable time for television and radio channels to broadcast. The term social media means publishing content at a time when our content has a better chance of getting the most views.
Finding the best time to share content on different social networks is not an easy task. But as always, there are great tools that can help us; Like the Insight Overview section on Instagram or the Buffer tool for Twitter.
3. Take continuity in daily content seriously
We need to keep our social networks active and update their content regularly. This shows our search engines and users that our website and business are active and dynamic.
People use our social media presence to identify our company, products, services, customers and capabilities. An Instagram account that publishes a post a month, or a Twitter account that has been active for three months, does not represent an active and dynamic company!
4. Publish the most relevant and up-to-date content
Users are always looking for the latest and greatest content. So how can we not forget the originality of the content content on social networks and always publish the latest content related to our business.
Our followers on social media follow us for relevant content about our business, services and brand, not pointless or outdated content. Search engines also look for posts that meet the user’s search goal.
5. Recognize users’ personalities and communicate with them in their own language
We are all social beings and we like to expand our circle of communication. This also applies to users. We need to make sure the content we produce matches their language and literature and makes them feel good.
When users connect better with us, they are more likely to share our content, talk about our brand and services with others, or even add new audiences to our page. We need to make that connection easier by knowing the audience persona.
6. Add social networking plugins to your site content
If we add social media plugins to our site, site users will be able to share our content on their social media channels. This helps increase site traffic and shows search engines that our content is of high quality and trustworthy that the audience will share it.
7. Optimize the profile and content of our business social networks
The first step is to put your site URL in your social media profile. We can also link to any content from the site we want from within the text of our posts. Of course, we can only use URL Naked to do this.
Maybe one day the social signal of social networks became a factor for ranking sites!
In his speech at SMX Advanced 2012, Matt Katz (Head of Google Anti-Spam) gave a short but important talk about social media links and signals. He said in this speech:
“I think over the next 10 years, we will most likely understand the identity of these networks, as well as the social connections between people. But for now, we have to deal with the web as it is and what Google bots are allowed to crawl. “Everything we can easily extract from the web and count on accessing them in the future.”
It’s been almost 10 years since that speech, and what we’re seeing today is the positive impact of social media signals and similar platforms on improving site rankings. Therefore, we must plan, design and evaluate effective strategies for social media presence in our site’s external SEO program and pay special attention to it. The program will include a detailed understanding of how each of these media outlets works, marketing content on them, and identifying other similar platforms.
Frequently Asked Questions
From which social networks can we get a social signal?
Face book, Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, Behance, YouTube, Tumblr and…
Can we buy a social signal?
Yes. There are websites that sell social signal services to sites. Just make sure the services on these sites are provided by real users, not bots.
How to get a signal from Instagram Social?
Instagram is one of the most popular social networks. So it seems very unlikely that Google will easily bypass the social signals of this popular social network.
Is the social signal as powerful as the backlinks?
Of course not! Backlinks are still the first and most important external SEO factor of the site and Google pays more attention to it. But this is not a reason for us to underestimate the positive effects of Social Signal on increasing the site’s ranking. For more information, we suggest you read the article What is a backlink .
Concluding remarks
Finally, we need to know why we are on social media, what is the best strategy to produce our brand content for each social channel, and what topics are we going to inform and educate our users to stimulate their curiosity! When we do this, we will receive the social signals needed to satisfy the search engines, and this will undoubtedly improve our site ranking.
