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A few months ago, I ran a poll asking if it is required for SEOs to have their sites participate in social sharing elements in order to compete in the search results.
I personally felt, with the value Google is placing on Google+ and the value Bing is placing on Facebook likes, social is and will be a necessity to compete in the search results going forward. Most SEOs agree with me on that.
I asked, To Compete, Does Your Site Need To Be Social? The results are in:
- 59% said yes, you do need social to compete in search.
- 34% said no, you don't need social to compete in search.
- 7% did not know either way.
I am honestly surprised more aren't saying yes, you need social to compete.
Forum discussion continued at WebmasterWorld.
This was written yesterday and scheduled to be posted today.
Comments:
Assertive-Media
04/13/2012 12:53 pm
I think the evolution of Google Panda & Venice is moving towards Social because it allows a websites visitor behaviour to become a ranking factor, if their social activity is higher and their engagement is higher, Google will count this as a ranking signal
Marc Ensign
04/13/2012 01:01 pm
It's definitely going to be an important part of the puzzle...not necessarily the biggest part, but an important part. The lines are getting blurred between social, communication, content, marketing, etc. Blogs used to be a way to "journal" and then they turned into more of a marketing tool and then they turned into a spammy way to get a good SEO ranking and now that the spammy blogs are starting to get you penalized they turned into a legitimate way to communicate value to your clients and visitors and position yourself as an expert. Social media is changing too...it used to be a way to spy on your ex girlfriend or figure out what your friends had for dinner but now more and more it's becoming a source of value. It's finding a home in all of this and it's not going away any time soon...
MindYourDigital
04/13/2012 01:05 pm
I'm also surprised by your results. Social channels can so easily be used (if done effectively) to quickly garner support for any campaign.
Tudor_Davies
04/14/2012 03:45 pm
I imagine if the question was "Could your site benefit from social media?" then the results would be different. People may not think they need social media but a lot of people would nevertheless benefit from sites such as Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook.