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We recently launched a facebook like campaign for one of our sites and got 100's of likes, and this appeared to contribute to our Trust Factors on SEO Moz.  Google doesn't seem to be able to differentiate between paid advertising on Facebook and non paid like campaigns.   It seemed to help us although we weren't specifically looking to work with Social as a part of our SEO strategy at that time.  Anything that gets you out there has got to be good regardless of the size of the URL.  In fact, maybe better to go with short URL given the character restriction on Twitter e.g.

Pinterest links all appear to be marked "no follow", so unless there are followed links buried deeper in the site that I'm missing, the SEO is correct. As David said, Pinterest isn't a link building tool, it's about traffic and eyeballs - even if they were followed, I'd question the value of it beyond getting one or two links - but, in any case, they're not.

Hello, Yes everyone has experienced a drop that used questionable tactics.  There are many threads floating around here with others saying the same thing. Have a great day and a happy new year. Matthew Boley

Yes, just ask them to add your website in the “Contributor To” section of their Google Plus profiles and you are done. However, I would love to read this post before you make any such decision – http://seo2.0.onreact.com/google-authorship-markup-disadvantages-everybody-ignores

In my experience - a bit of the former and lots of the latter. i.e. the specific page generates strong authority signals and as a result the parent domain gets credit for some of that extra authority as well. How much? No idea how to measure and I suspect the amount will be different under different circumstances. (This assumes the page is actually on the primary domain and not a subdomain). I think of it like links: a strong incoming link to an internal page is especially good for that page, but also contributes to the overall site's ranking signals as well. I'd be very interested to hear what others think on this topic too! Paul

I worked with a client who reported a significant drop in Likes today.

Hi Benjamin, Are you saying you want to use a different business name on your Google+ page than you are using on your Google+ Local page? This is not a good idea, as the chances of Google becoming confused about your identity are pretty high. You should brand your business with a single title.

Probably bad in terms of potential duplicate content issues. Unless of course you have more DA than the social media networks........yeah, thought so

Latent dirichlet allocation is the newest school of thought on content: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lda-and-googles-rankings-well-correlated Essentially focusing on contextual clues to reinforce the idea of what a page is really about. Writing about Jaguar the animal, talk about fur.  Writing about Jaguar the car, mention spark plugs. Here's a followup article to SEOMoz's that's quite informative: http://www.seangolliher.com/2010/seo/185/ It get's into the actual math of the data.

thx, David. Yes, I am referring to how I may upload videos from youtube to my business page's Google+ account under the "video" tab - not as a feed. When I click the video tab there is a red "Upload New Videos" and either upload from computer or drag 'n drop option. Does not seem an option to copy paste the youtube link. If anyone knows if this is possible, let me know

Active on social media is interaction to me so if the content you distribute on social media sites creates buzz and people started interaction with you... You are active! It’s simple is that! Will Google find it active or not is a different debate... may be Google+ interaction will be considered as more important as compare to others but this is not conform till yet!

I found a demo video on Scribit and around the 20 minute mark they mention that robots cannot see curated pages on your site (guessing they are tagged as nofollow). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9-rosbyt5k So you're probably not going to see much, if any benefit other than people seeing your content on another site and (hopefully) linking to your original article instead of the curated one on someone else's site.

Hi Kristian, First of all, Google will not going to treat it as duplicate content as we share titles and URLs in social sites not the whole content. The more your content  get shared, the more it will help you in getting ranking as well as traffic.

Thank you Shane for your answer. Anyway, is it safe to post at one time in so many social networks in viewpoint of Google see it as unusual and send some Panda or something?

I think things like LinkedIn Endorsements have an effect that is outside the sphere of SEO in one sense. What you are achieving is social proof - other people saying you are good at something in particular. That being said, your LinkedIn page has a static URL and can be optimised for keywords and if your endorsements include the things you want to be found for then that can help you rank personally. E.g. if you put in 'Martin Oxby SEO' then you get my blog first and second is my LinkedIn page. Not that high volumes of people put that in, it's just for illustration! So it's more about your personal branding and identity on the internet. So go get those endorsements, but see it as having other types of value - and optimise your Linked In page so that it definitely includes the things you want to personally be associated with. Hope this helps.

Agreed. I too use a T as a button, similar to yours by the sounds of it! I've been wary of using it though because of their policy. However, we've been going with the T button for about 2+ years and we get 250K unique monthly visitors... I would have thought someone would have given us a slap on the wrist by now if it wasn't allowed, right? I'm sure it's fine... Matt

I agree with Shane. Look at the language Google use. They are always really careful and they use "Social Signals" not Social links. So its not really the links its the signals they give off. Look here back in 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM5ap8NqkuY Matt Cutts is talking about using it to determine authority and reputation. And here he says it again. http://www.seroundtable.com/google-links-social-15396.html Here he's saying it's a complex mix that's getting more social over time with links never really dying. Like shane says Social is more than just rankings. You get to build brand awareness and keep engagement. Its an awesome tool if used right and you can do it efficiently. For eg. say you create 3-4 types of facebook posts. Come up with 20 or so and schedule them for release at the rate of about 4 facebook posts a week. Keep them short and simple, work out your target audience peak online time and tailor your posts to suit. Try and come up with ideas to share, comment, like etc... then keep up with comments and build social links within the industry people who like and trust you and will share your content and you theirs and you very quickly have a campaign that is managed within 2-3 hours a week. Not only that if its good content you'd enjoy sharing others as welll as your own.

Pointing the likes to a FB page that points to your site would be optimal IMO.