Will Socially Awkward Sites Suffer In Google In The Long Run?

A WebmasterWorld thread asks a question probably on the mind of many site owners today. The question asked, "Is my site doomed because I won't go social?"

This is a valid question, some sites for some reasons do not want to get involved in adding social features to their site. Such as adding rich snippets, authorship markup, Facebook and Twitter buttons and maybe more importantly to Google, Google+ buttons and profiles.

Will a site suffer in the long term if they refuse to adapt to the new social space?

Personally, I think so but not everyone agrees.

A senior member put it nicely, it is not just the direct factor of having social factors in the algorithm but the indirect influence social has on other factors, such as links, in the algorithm. He said:

In terms of physical downgrades, I'd say it's unlikely that social signals will ever be factored into the algo to such a degree that it would be an issue.

But in terms of causality - I think increased personalisation of SERPs will have a larger impact on organic SEO via social than traditional links / branding / traffic benefits.

Here is our poll, what do you think?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Image credit to ShutterStock for the nerd.