There are two strategies of getting social signals to your website. The first strategy is create your own accounts. This is a must in this day and age. Otherwise your web presence does not look natural to Google. You don’t necessarily have to promote these profiles actively but they should exist and you should post on them every now and then. The Social media accounts your business should not do without – GMB (Google My Business). Formerly known as Google Places and before that Google Maps, Now Google Maps is it’s answer to MapQuest.
GMB is what is responsible for you to rank in the Google 3 Pack. This used to be called the 7 pack because they used to list 7 websites along with reviews addresses or Phone numbers with a map indicator for some of the listings. Now there are 3 listings and they are located underneath Google’s paid ads (Adwords) and on top of the Google organic search results. GMB is crucial to your business.
You should also set up Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Bing Places. These are the least you should set up. It would be a good idea to add Pinterest, Tumblr and others depending on the nature of your business.
The other way of getting social signals. Advertise on other peoples accounts. This is an easy way but costs money. My service is quite affordable, popular and effective and it’s available here.
Social signals won’t usually help your rankings directly. There are a few exceptions to this rule. If you are targeting long tail keywords with no or very little competition than you have a shot at ranking directly with using social signals.
When buying social signals you will get little to no traffic. Purchasing a social signals service can be part of your social media marketing strategy. It’s part of a strategy. There are other forms of Social Media Marketing. Where you might advertise on large and active accounts that have very active fans and followers. This type of advertising is usually more expensive. It is not necessary for ranking locally or globally for that matrter although it can help and won’t hurt.
Why use social signals if they don’t send traffic and they won’t help you directly with ranking? They do help overall big time. Using social signals is affordable and is a must as part of your SEO strategy. Mixing Social signals with other effective SEO methods will help you rank your local business, or your national, or global business.
