What is a social signal? How important is the Social signal to SEO?

Social signals are a measure of activity on social networks, such as votes, votes, or other participation, that search engines can consider as part of a ranking algorithm.

Like backlinks, votes and sharing on social media can be interpreted as endorsements for brands and web content, which is a great help for search rankings.

Types of Social signals

Social signals include:

1. Votes : Likes on Facebook, Google +1, votes on LinkedIn
2. Post : Post on Facebook, Wordpress and Tumblr, Twitter tweet
3. Share : Shares, reposts and retweets (retweets)
4. Bookmark: Social bookmarking (bookmarking or sharing websites on social networks) on sites like Delicious and Diigo
5. Comment: Comment on the post and share

There is much speculation about how many social signals are being integrated into search engine ranking algorithms. Both Google and Bing have confirmed that the social signal is involved in rankings, however, full disclosure will lead to negative things.

Google has integrated social network data into its Analytics software, to help webmasters measure the impact of social networking on websites. This is an indication of how much Google values ​​this data.

It's possible that Google and other search engines own a lot of data that can be used as a ranking factor far beyond what they share with the public.

The value of social signal

The value of the social signal is often confused with the value of the links to the web content they contain. The value of backlinks has long been a ranking factor for search engines like Google and Bing. However, links from social networking platforms usually do not pass PageRank, due to the widely implemented nofollow attribute, used to prevent link spam.

Thanks to trusted social media accounts in quality networks, often interacting with quality web content, both Google and Bing use these recommendations to get a clearer picture of trust, Popularity and authority of shared, linked and liked sites.

Other functions of social signal

1. Social signal support for backlinks : A website has hundreds of backlinks but no social signal is a clear sign of low quality link building.
2. Content discovery : Likes and shares from reputable social media accounts lead to faster search engine indexing and discovery.