Link Building Using Social Media – Social Media Influence Rankings
Link building using social media is something we all tend to do, those that don’t are missing in on a lot. But there are some people that stopped using social media and bookmark links because of “low value” of those links and how they are only used by spammers and such. Well, there is both truth and misconception with this type of link building, so let’s talk about it.
Using bookmarks to create links towards your pages is not something that is done in order to get good rankings in SERP directly as a result of those links. Bookmarks and most of the social media links that we build are used for one purpose only, and that is to get our pages indexed faster. Aside from fast indexing the obvious reason for adding links to bookmarks and social media is to get some direct traffic and also spread the word.
But although bookmark links have no direct result on the SERP and it will be the same with 10 links or 1,000 links, in fact, 1,000 bookmark links might in fact raise a flag, so we shouldn’t overdo it. But on the other hand social media like Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn have a totally different role to play now in the rankings.
It is a great practice to publish any new page on your blog or a website on these three social media, if you have a solid and targeted followers base you will be able to get a decent amount of traffic only from these three sites, not to mention StumbleUpon, Digg or many others. But that is not the only reason why link building on these websites is important. Although you will get direct traffic and you will get indexed faster there is one great benefit that is a part of Google Algorithm for quite some time already, and that is the influence of social media mentions in your rankings.
If you tweet your post once you will be seen by Google and it will help to get your post indexed faster. But if you tweet it 2 or 3 times, and if some of those tweets get re-tweeted that will help your post rank higher in the SERP as the social mention count is one of the factors for Google rankings, and not one of the weak ones, but one that has a direct influence.
I noticed that some of the articles I published on this blog that have been re-tweeted over 10 times are always in the top 10 for their keywords. That may not be hard considering that some of them have got low competition, but some have a great number of competitors and didn’t have any direct link building done to them, besides social media. So that leaves me to one conclusion, invest time in social media, but don’t just go for 100 of them and get nothing, invest in 2-3 of them and you will get results from both social aspect, marketing aspect, link building aspect and of course direct traffic and rankings.
About The Author
Zarko Zivkovic is the founder and CEO of Practical SEO and also a passionate blogger. All of his free time he dedicates to his Practical SEO blog and giving free advice as well as participating in the blogging community.
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I heard about this kind of link building but I am going to use facebook and twitter with same frequency as now. Some people do not realize that anything in excess is not good, to use facebook in excess is not good, to use twitter or anything else in excess is not good!
Hey Zarko,
As far as social media goes, I have been seeing more traffic from Stumble Upon than any of the others. Twitter used to send me decent traffic, but that has slacked off as of late.
As far as the reason for social bookmarking goes, indexing is definitely it. I have found the same to be true.
Nice read.
Mark
Great post Zarko. Social Media many not be effective yet you cannot ignore it. The point you stated about Google taking social mention as one of the factors, is really one of the nicest thing to happen on web. I think this would lead to better usage of social media sites. People will make more and more use of the same to get good results. But yes, it should be limited anyways.
Social bookmarking is a ‘must’ of seo although, as you said, some people are of low opinion about it. As for me, I get certain amount of traffic from some popular social bookmarking sites and I get links from Google.
It’s not a secret, most popular social bookmarking sites are no follow but can bring lots of traffic to your blog. Unlike less popular sites that give backlinks but practically no traffic
I won’t stop doing social bookmarking.
I totally agree with you Zarko socail networking sites has huge benefit and deliver tons of traffic to your blog we should never underestimate the power of these sites.
There was actually a post over on SEOmoz that showed the increase in traffic after several people retweeted a link to their SEO beginners guide. Whatever algorithms are in place now as far as social media definitely give a lot of weight to links that are shared/retweeted/etc. Their beginners guide was even ranking in the top 10 for just “Beginners Guide” with no mention of SEO. Pretty wild stuff and completely backs up your post.
True, it helps a lot for indexing, but i’ve noticed that if your blog has a high enough authority and a high content refresh rate (post 2-3 articles/day) you’ll get your new pages indexed in no time. Sometimes it takes hours, other times just minutes.
But since there aren’t too many such websites, we need to rely on social bookmarking.
You are right about that Maria, our authority determines the index speed and crawl rates. For my blog everything I publish is indexed withing an hour or two without using social media, but social media helps me to rank a new post highly in the SERP as it is fresh and a few retweets here and there might just get it on the first page for some competitive terms. This is a great achievement and can mean some serious traffic, even if it is for a few days only.
[...] (2) Link Building Using Social Media – Social Media Influence Rankings- Link building using social media is something we all tend to do, those that don’t are missing in on a lot. But there are some people that stopped using social media and bookmark links because of “low value” of those links and how they are only used by spammers and such. Well, there is both truth and misconception with this type of link building, so let’s talk about it. [...]
Zarko,
great explanation on the importance of social media and how it should be used and utilized. Social Media is a powerful tool, but there is a certain amount of work involved in getting those solid followers who will regularly look at your work and take the time to do a little social media.
Thanks Zarko. Your all posts are very interesting and great. Your writing is very informative. Social media is the best technique in SEO to get traffic. But, can it provide backlinks? if yes then, can you provide me some names of that sites?
Thanks for this post. It provides me a something that I do not know.
Hi Zarko,
Greetings from Tokyo, Japan.
Does that ring some bells?
It’s been some time since we had a discussion…
Today I’m being selfish. I need your advice and opinion to help me take an important decision. May I request you to respond to my latest post?
Thank you in advance.
Cheers,
Mark
Hej Zarko, sta ima
Awesome post and I think I would agree with you. I mean I have to cause it is obvious that SE are paying more attention to social media.
Like you said, don’t over do it, because it will raise a red flag. Also, it would be great if your friends, and not you, are the ones submitting your posts.
Zdravo Brankice
You are right, it is more profitable when your posts are submitted by other users and not yourself, but I prefer to submit my own content and then let it go from there, it helps spread the word.
Also, a note regarding the conference last night, Matt Cutts again stated clearly that even though you have some social buzz, if the same people keep re-tweeting your posts it won’t matter much, so we all need to engage our audience in social media and not rely on our friends only!
This is great post, especially for people who are not in the know and have not taken advantage of social media. I for one have been using social media for the past two years to create some of my links and it has worked great for me so far. I do not think I will be stopping any time soon.
[...] social media and link building, in my previous post I said that social media links will help you get your website indexed faster, and they will, but I was also of the opinion that [...]
Other people still consider that having too many links is far more powerful than having few links to authority sites. Actually, I was able to read that point from a blogger too so I think it’s just a matter of proving it to yourself if which strategy can be more effective than others.
Hi Zarko,
I like what you said about joining 2 or three social media sites and not all of them. It’s just too much work.
I totally agree. I think one should focus on Twitter and Facebook to start. They are the big boys on the block.
Terry Conti
day-by- day, the popularity of Social media is increasing repidly. therfore search engine can’t avode it. and zarkro your expanded very well. thanks for share with us this innovative information.
I couldn’t agree more about picking just a couple pages at a time to really leverage social. It’s tends to get so much more benefit just because the people that are reading the content are already interested in it.
@Zarko Zivkovic
Good to know about link building with social websites. Today, I have added one question on SEOmoz regarding link building with Web OR Social OR Local directories. You can just look in to for more idea.
http://www.seomoz.org/q/where-i-need-to-jump-web-or-social-or-local-directories
Istvan had given me very good reply to get answer. But, I have some confusion about link building with these channels.
As I mentioned, I want to rank well with my targeted landing page which is targeting with high competitive keyword just like “Patio Umbrellas”.
Right now, I rank well and completed almost basic on page changes which may help me to compete well.
Now, I have confusion with local directories and web directories because, it may provide link to my home page rather than category level page. And, I want to rank well with my category page.
What is confusion with social websites? All are with nofollow attribute so no chance to get page rank from that… I agree to focus with specific websites like Twitter and Facebook but, will it help me to get rank in specific time frame?
BTW::: Thanks for sharing such an interesting one and eager to get reply from your side.