What are Social Signals in SEO?

Often misunderstood in digital marketing, 'Social Signals SEO' refers to the idea that social media interactions can indirectly affect a page's organic search ranking. While bots can't crawl private social networks like Facebook or Instagram, social signals like shares, likes, and comments can direct substantial traffic to your website or blog.

Moreover, these signals can help to build natural backlinks, a critical aspect of any SEO strategy. The engagement metrics that social signals provide, such as clicks and shares, offer valuable insight into the content's performance, thereby aiding SEO.

Despite ongoing debate about the direct impact of social signals on SEO, there is no doubt that an active social media presence builds brand credibility and recognition, which indirectly boosts SEO performance.

Given that nearly half of the world's population uses social media, the potential reach of social signals for digital marketing is immense. Through interacting with social media content, consumers provide valuable engagement statistics through their social signals.

This engagement is critical in digital marketing as it drives brand recognition, amplifies content reach, and contributes to traffic generation and customer acquisition. A strong brand presence on social media indirectly aids the SEO of a website by driving traffic towards it.

Publishing compelling and engaging content that encourages users to interact can lead to an increase in social signals, which in turn, strengthens digital marketing efforts by diversifying traffic sources and providing a broader platform to reach potential customers.

Successful brands on social media know the importance of harnessing social signals for SEO purposes. For example, when a popular Facebook page shares a link to a website and it garners a significant number of likes, comments, and shares, it indirectly improves the website's search engine rankings.

Also, popular tweets with links to a website can lead to increased activity on the site, indirectly boosting its search engine ranking. Facebook reactions on a company's post, hashtags used on Instagram posts, LinkedIn post shares, and YouTube video likes are other examples of social signals.

Another practical example is Buzzfeed Tasty's social media strategy. Their engaging videos on Facebook are shared, liked, and commented on by millions of viewers, generating substantial traffic to their website and improving their SEO.