When it comes to search engine ranking, page owners are always looking for ways to get to that top page and first line results when a related search is being made. Many of these owners may be businessmen or bloggers who would like to get as many people to their website as possible. The greater the traffic will be, the better the chances of seeing their page and buying their products.
Understanding the process of SEO or search engine optimization is quite complicated since there are a lot of factors that will affect the page’s ranking in these engines. Over the past few years, people have always been using backlinks to increase their rankings in these search engines but recently, there had been a study that showed an increase in the role of social signals in the impact of a page’s score.
Here are some points that you need to know regarding backlinks vs. social signals:
- According to a recent study, Social signals especially those that are related to Facebook such as Facebook shares, comments and likes have shown the biggest growth in terms of impact in ranking. This was clearly seen in both the United States and the United Kingdom ranking factors. Twitter and Google plus also play a part. Even though twitter and Google plus both didn’t beat Facebook at the top, they are still strong factors to consider.
- Facebook especially “shares” done within the site became the number one ranking factor on the list. Twitter came in 6th. But even if these two social signals are at the top half of the factors, the study still shows that Google’s “+1” still has the strongest connection especially if you are using Google as your search engine.
- Social signals may be on the rise, but the score of backlinks has still maintained its high ranks in terms of search ranking influence. Unlike social media when the increase has just been seen recently, backlinks have always been the factor that everyone knows about when it comes to search optimization.
- A Recent interview with Matt Cutts who works in Google states that backlinks will prevail as one of the strongest influences in rankings for the next few years even if social signals have established their marks as well. Backlinks are specifically very useful especially if the user is not logged into their Google account.
- The search optimization factors may change in a few years’ time and this debate may go on for days whether people should prioritize backlinks or focus their attention to social signals.
