For years, the dispute whether there is an impact of social networks over SEO has become an ongoing matter of discussion. This matter refers to the social signals, that is to say, the “likes”, “retweets” or the share contents, among others.

The answer that all analysts affirm about Social SEO have to do with the fact that the social signals have an influence over the positioning of a website, although not in a direct way.

Google does not consider social signals as a sign of interest on the part of the user. Just by being carried out, social mentions, do not contribute anything as regards positioning. That is the first concept to be taken into account: it does not exist any direct relationship between social networks on the SEO. Only by presence and interaction with the users of our social networks, we are not going to see a better positioning inside the SERP of Google.

There is always a “but” included in each statement. There is an indirect influence of social networks on website positioning and it is reflected in different ways. Therefore, we could not ignore the importance of proper interaction between our social networks and our website.

A new discipline: The Social SEO

The Social SEO is defined as the discipline that deals with the interaction between social networks and SEO. This discipline tries to enhance social media to support organic global positioning. To be more specific, the Social SEO tries to understand the way social media affects the positioning of websites.

We could also see the Social SEO as the convergent discipline between marketing strategies on social media (the SMO) and organic positioning strategies on search engines ( the SEO).

We do know that the factors that have influence over the order of results on the SERP of Google are a matter of strong debate and speculations. In the case of Social SEO, this kind of debate is very important, and despite the fact that Google authorities have already informed in numerous occasions that there is no direct relationship between social networks on the SEO, some researches have shown that social signals do have influence over website positioning.

Having this in mind, we have to answer two simple questions: What social signals have influence over the SEO? To what extent?

Provided that the items that search engines consider to classify the content of a website are not publicly known, there have been many research studies in order to determine the most influent factors for the organic positioning of a website. The most significant results are published once a year by SearchMetrics.

In any case, it is essential to state that these research studies do not necessarily imply that a direct relationship between the positioning of a website and the number of times a social mention has received does exist. It only shows that there is, to some extent, a positive correlation between social networks and the SEO. To conclude, whether you like social networks or not, you definitely have to use them.

About Andrea Picaso

Andrea is a SEO/ SEM/ CMS specialist with more than 10 years of experience positioning Websites for local and global Customers

Nowadays Andrea specializes in leading the SEO/ SEM department of TISA, continuously researching about new positioning algorithms to obtain a better performance and rating in a lower time.

Beyond her technical knowledge Andrea enjoys listening Music from the 90's and Painting.