Social Signals - Which Service?

JudderMan · February 2014

Do you use social signals? If so, which service do you recommend? I have one in my sights at the moment, but I'd really like a tool/app that I can do it myself with.....or does that not exist?

I've never been a fan of social stuff, mainly because in my personal life I think it's a pointless exercise. I only have a FB account for speaking to family who live in different countries. I don't have a Twitter account (apart from my SEO company's acc, but even then all I see is just inane bullshit or sales updates) or a smartphone (LOL, seeing how long I can last with my trusty Nokia 'mobile') as only twice in my life have I ever needed to be online/check emails while I'm not near my laptop......maybe I should get a life?

Anyway, back on topic, IF social signals are helpful towards SEO then join in and let me know - HOWEVER I've proved it wrong for years ranking #1 for some pretty incredible keywords without resorting to fake likes and twits but as ever I know you need to be fluid and pliable with SEO and adapt. Yes I sound like I'm 2 years behind the times, but as mentioned I've never needed social signals before.

I've tried many Fiverr (of course the quality is low) gigs, real service gigs (where the site only sells signals), AddMeFast and Web2Rule (footprint....good luck with that) and saw no difference across many real and test sites. A client of mine buys signals himself and wrecks every site and thinks it's my link-building's fault - even though all other clients are safe and have been through numerous G updates - and yes, he's an absolute **** stain.

So, what service if any? And if you want to debate, is it worth it? Weak opinions or affiliated people aren't wanted, experience and results are. My experience says that it's junk unless you are completely WH and actually employ someone to get involved with G+/circles....even then I outrank many 'SEO gurus' with my SEO site with no signals.

gooner · February 2014

Lol i hear ya on the lack of social activity, that is me too. Just can not be bothered with it.

Circles are important i think, i see a lot of crappy sites with hundreds of circles ranking for keywords they have no right to in various niches, especially local business niches.

I don't use social stuff for my sites either so i can't recommend anything sorry, but your intro made me laugh

)

DonCorleone · February 2014

just buy anything from BHW and drip feed . or If you want it cheap try addmefast .

JudderMan · February 2014

As mentioned, I've already tried AFM mate, it was crap.

davbel · February 2014

@judderman @gooner I'm the same as you guys - apart from a few select ppl on twitter, I don't have time for social and just really don't get why anyone would want to blast details of their personal life all over the web.

However I do have one site which was started as a bit of fun, where I have done absolutely zero link building, but due to the nature of the content it gets a ton of likes & pins and it pretty much ranks top 3 for all of it's terms.

Over the years it's gained a few natural links (10s rather than 100s), but as it's competing with the likes of allrecipes, BBC, about.com, Gordan Ramsay, Jamie Oliver and the rest, I'm fairly certain it's "social proof" that's keeping it there.

But in saying all of that, I agree with what you said in as much as you can still easily rank a site without them, however, I do tend to create at least some social stuff for my sites, just really to make it look a bit more "natural".

I think Pavel at Rankwyz mentioned that he was working on something to automate social, but other than what's on their forums I don't know any more.

Samx · February 2014

I am in the SM hate club too
But I think some social signals at least look good on a site. So for that alone I collect some on anything that isn't purely short-term. The searchmetrics SEO report certainly shows that well ranking sites have them. If those signals going into the rankings or not, well no idea

I use web2rule and find it adequate for what I need.

JudderMan · February 2014

Cool, thanks @davbel at least I know there's two other Brits that are socially inept

I set up my lead gen sites to have Twatter, G+ and FB, two posts on each linking each other social acc, then that's it, no more work done on it. I agree that 'having' the links/buttons on a site is a good move and if people really want to 'like' it then fair enough. I don't deal in viral products so maybe that's why I don't see the power of social, where I can imagine it goes insane. I'm a firm believer of working hard to get places not accidentally become a zillionaire overnight (although it would be nice).

johnmiller · February 2014

lol, same here, can't stand FB and the likes as I rather meet with people in person or pick up the phone...and also still have a 5 year old sony ericsson

) Not a hypnotized smartphone zombie yet or anytime soon.

I tried web2rule on one site and it appeared to give it a bit of a push for some of the easier keywords, however I can't be 100% sure since at the same time I started my first GSA campaign. However, despite ongoing social signals (i mean everything, low bouncerate traffic, likes, shares, tweets etc.) and link building it's stuck on page 3 for most keywords.

Why do you think web2rule would leave a footprint? (apart from using the same WP plugin, though that should change with the new version they're working on)

Also got a few thousand AMF points with a bot and tried those on another site that purposely didn't have any linkbuilding done but it helped absolutely nothing in terms of rankings.

I'm seeing the same for youtube. People will always claim you need to have x amounts of views and likes and comments, subs, faves and what not (= social signals) but at the end of the day I find just throwing a ton of links at it get's it ranked. Purchased views and likes a few times but all those videos, without exception, got banned and I rather don't waste my time building links to a video that gets deleted a few weeks later.

So far I'm not really convinced that social helps a whole lot (might also depend on the niche) though I have to agree with @gooner that having your google author in lots of circles does seem to have an effect.

donaldbeck · February 2014

@johnmiller

I just got my first smart phone about 6 months ago. It's very useful.

You'll very likely change your mind once you have one.

JudderMan · February 2014

@donaldbeck - LOL I have an iPhone 3GS sat at home that was given to me. I hate them. I only use my wife's phone for Strava when I'm out on my bike, other than that and the very rare occasions I need sat nav in the car, I can't see them being that good. I've tried to Google something on my wife's phone and gave up after 20 minutes of shitty 3G slowness. I'm sure 4G will be far more useful and the fact that you can get RDP on it makes sense for checking into your server but I'd still rather carry a laptop around....this message would have taken me an hour to write on a phone LOL not the 30 seconds on my laptop.

johnmiller · February 2014

@donaldbeck: I can't deny these things become more useful with fast internet, tons of apps for various needs etc...but the majority of people just seem to use them as time wasters, checking their FB/twitter 100x a day and in between texting stupid shit on whatsapp or playing random games.

Every morning I sit in the same train and there's tons of young people around me. Years ago, they'd talk to each other, laugh together, do stupid things or whatever. Now, the majority of them just sits on their seat, quietly, staring and tapping their phone for hours. It's almost a bit scary. I see some people rolling their eyes when they read this and we're way off topic now but that's just been my impression so far. Oh and by the way, I'm not an old fart but 25.

If you find it useful then good for you, I'm not a hater. But if I don't have a serious need for it, I won't get one. And so far, just like JudderMan, my laptop served me well.

donaldbeck · February 2014

@JudderMan @johnmiller

The reason I wrote to you guys is because I used to hold the exact same opinions. And lots of the things that have been said are true. People waste their time on them a lot for instance, no one can deny that.

Just to give you a few examples of what I do with it though:

I use it as a dragon naturally speaking mic and get 99.X accuracy.

Use a few chinese learning apps which are indispensable to my studies at this point.

If you give it some time, you might serendipitously discover a useful application. For instance, I didn't know I could use it as a DNS mic when I bought it, but now I use it as one everyday.

gooner · February 2014

I'm with @donaldbeck - I thought i didn't need a smart phone until i got an iPhone 5 last year... But now i use it all the time. Smartphones have a lot of different uses these days,

TOPtActics · February 2014

http://synnd.com/

2Take2 · February 2014

I'm not a big fan of social media for rankings either, but I guess it can be worthwhile to give your site a bit of social proof and help improve conversions.

I only got a smart phone a couple of years ago, but for me now it's an essential bit of kit, aside from all the useful things they can do, mainly just because I can sync it to my outlook and keep up to date with client emails whilst on the move.

Having said that, in some ways I wish I never got one in the first place, as I never seem to get a break now!

)

ron · February 2014

I hate social like everybody else here, but I am looking down the line (only a little).

We all know that G is on a hate mission with SEO. Mainly because it messes with their ability to make even more $$billions in profit each year. I don't despise them for it. They built the playground, and allowed us to play.

Where I am going with this is that when Sergei and Larry were in grad school, their premise that a link equals a vote was brilliant. Now that everybody and their local pet shop owner is gaming the system, about the only pure vote left is social.

But that can obviously be gamed. The thing is you can't really game a tweet from a big authority user - just like you can't get a PR 9 from Adobe. It is a harder game to game, lol. I think we will see more importance on this going forward.

I can see the writing on the wall. If you saw my thread about Yahoo ( https://forum.gsa-online.de/discussion/8821/crazy-yahoo-traffic-1800-visitors-in-one-hour#latest ) you would see 6000+ visitors that came to two of my websites in 24 hrs using [secure search]. Basically Yahoo is adopting G's position on not passing the search term to the website. So everything is changing.

I guess I am rambling here. But I honestly believe we are heading there within 18 months. Probably where the social signals mean 'more than' the URL links. Maybe not for every niche, but for niches where a lot of news is made would seem to make sense. So 'national' niches would be the perfect fit in my eye for this treatment, and local will always be skewed with a geo-based/citation-based model. Some local could be impacted, but I wouldn't extrapolate exceptions into a new rule.

All of that is my best educated guess.

As noted above, there is synnd which is a drip social. Used to be $47/mth, and now the starter package is $97/mth, and goes higher. If you have enough cash flow to bury that expense easily, it would probably be worth a look. They have had problems in the past with various social platforms not working, and I am unsure if they are stable now.