Everything You Need To Know About Social Signals

Social signals include all the various ways in which an audience can interact with your content. This can be in the form of likes, comments, shares and other interactions that your audience can do across various social platforms. As Google’s search algorithm evolves each year, social signals are becoming more and more important for page ranking and authority.

Let’s dive into social signals, their impact on SEO and how you can improve your website’s social signals.

What Counts As A Social Signal?

Any kind of interaction that a person can do with your content to show their approval or disapproval of the content counts as a social signal. This can be in the form of likes, comments, shares on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, upvotes and downvotes on Reddit, retweets on Twitter or even pins on Pinterest.

Social Media And Social Signals

Don’t forget that social media platforms can act as search engines too. A lot of people turn to Twitter or Facebook to look at a brand’s identity before making a purchase. If you’re inactive on such platforms, i.e., you have low social signals, chances are that the prospective customer might assume that you are not an authentic brand or in some cases, not even find your page.

A good brand usually has exceptional social signals, to the extent that their social media pages also get featured in Google’s search results.

Social Signals And SEO

While Google has just recently opened up about how social signals can be a factor in page ranking, Bing has always been transparent about using social signals. So it is no surprise that social signals should be among your top priorities while improving your SEO. In fact, signals like shares and retweets can also serve as backlinks to your website, thus helping you in SEO. 

Improving Social Signals

Improving your social signals essentially boils down to increasing your social media presence. For that, you need to have an account on all the social media platforms and post fairly regularly in each of them. Encourage your audience to follow you and also lead them to your website and other accounts.

Also, create a blog section on your website where you can regularly post shareable content. Include interaction buttons like share, like, tweet, etc. so your audience can easily share these on their social media. Don’t forget to add your social handles on your website with CTAs like ‘Follow us on Twitter’, ‘Like our Facebook page’ etc.

In recent years, social signals have come a long way with their impact on SEO and their importance is bound to increase in the future. If you haven’t built your social identity yet, it’s never too late to start. Now that you know what social signals are and how they can help your brand, get to work and improve your rankings.


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