While researching how to gain traffic to our template directory many articles suggest posting updates to social media. While looking at articles for SEO and directly in google webmaster tools they say minor updates such as small updates shouldn’t be blasted on social media and could negatively effect SEO.
When we make updates to our site with adding new templates we post them automatically to Twitter and Facebook. I never thought that would be seen as a bad thing by google. Thoughts? Opinions? Am I right? Wrong?
Not sure. There have been threads here about if/how social links affect SEO, and the consensus among the “more trusted” contributors is that it has no effect on SEO, I suppose that would include negative effects too.
I would say that it depends.
How significant is the updated, what value has the social post.
Otherwise I’d see the constant updates more as spam. Just recently unfollowed a twitter feed because of the constant updates. It got annoying and they were cluttering up the feed.
True, Twitter can be overdone. Prolific tweeters can be an annoyance, especially if they have nothing significant to say.
But while that could harm social referrals and follows, does that affect SEO specifically?
Google does have guidelines on “Link Schemes” but I believe this only affects links that pass Page Rank. Since social links are generally nofollow, this should not apply to them. Thus they should have neither positive or negative effects on ranking.
If it is something you expect real people following you on social media will want to know then make the post. If you are only doing it for SEO purposes then don’t.
We’re having a lot of problems getting our site to rank in the search engines and I was curious if this might have been a reason. No one has been able to give a for sure answer.
No one can give an answer for sure, because Google’s processes are secret. However, you can apply logic to the situation. If lots of people suddenly discovered your template and wanted to tell others how great it is on social media, do you think Google would want to punish you for that? Of course not. But it most likely won’t have any effect either way. Google is interested in serving up what best matches the user search—so, as always, your focus should be solely on providing good content that clearly describes its purpose.
The widespread obsession over SEO is a disease on the web that has wasted many a chunk of people’s lives.
Possibly this is the result of the fact that Google has become the Wizard of Oz, and many small businesses feel helpless in the face of that; considering the bottom line might be their livelihood. Owning a small business used to mean opening a store (or place of business), then advertising along very staid and traditional methods which were straightforward and not not necessarily a time sink.
Now there are more avenues for entrepreneurs, but one must be able to multitask on a a huge scale.
I’ve seen business owners who are panicked and don’t know what to do. SEO seems to some as a lifesaver in a sea of the unknown.
IMHO, it’s a mistake for any business to rely on the randomness of a commercial operation like Google. Simply hoping that you’ll get traffic/business via an online search tool isn’t a viable business model. Marketing is much bigger than that, and always has been. It has to be very proactive and multifaceted. Things have changed over time, but it’s never been viable simply to sit back and hope that the winds will blow favorably for you—be it via search engines, word of mouth or whatever.
There is so much misinformation pedaled that it’s no wonder people get confused. I just wish people would reflect a little more on what it means to base your business success on the vagaries of a commercial entity. Google is not the Internet. It’s just a website, owned by a business focussed solely on making money for itself.
Hi template search, in my own opinion Social Media and SEO goes hand in hand in boosting search engine rankings. I’ve read some articles over the internet that Social Media platforms like Google Plus, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are included as one of the ranking factors in Google. Though Matt Cutts said that it does not affect your rankings, many SEO experts still believe that if you shared a content gathered a big amount of likes and shares, it has been retwitted a number of times, gathered big plus1s it would still affect you in a positive way. Imagine how many people could read your content and how helpful it was. Also, if it was not important, how come that if you search for a brand, their twitter profile, facebook page and Google plus profile always appear? Here’s a helpful link if you want to know more about how Social Media affects SEO: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/social-media-and-seo/. It is posted in one of Neil Patel’s famous blogs. Hope you’ll read it.
Well, he should know, if anyone does. He works for Google and has nothing to gain by lying.
Having a positive effect is not the same thing as affecting SEO or SERPs. Social media can be a great way to get traffic, or to gain recognition, but it does not directly affect SERPs. (Sharing great content on social media may lead to more people looking at and then linking to your site, but that’s a secondary effect, not a direct result.)
Again, you are confusing two different issues here. Google (and other search engines) crawls and ranks pages from social media in the same way it crawls and ranks pages from any other site. That does not mean that social media has any influence on the ranking of other sites.