How important are social signals to SEO?

[activitysuper]

How important are social signals to SEO?

Are generating social signals a must? It seems every website out there has some sort of social sharing tool installed, everyone is after a like or a tweet.

Are we now looking at getting as many likes/tweets etc from real accounts as possible because actually they effect SERP's a lot.

Cheers

[GeorgeAndrews]

From my point of view, the idea is not so much that the social shares themselves are a signal; but rather, the more your content is shared, the more likely it is to be read by influencers. It's more about getting your content in front of the eyes of people you want to visit your site, engage with your business, and also link to you. This is a great way to build natural links.

[NiallSmith]

Social signals have recently become increasingly important to your SEO program. I would personally recommend having some sort of 'share-ability' on your website whether it be a Facebook 'Like' button, Twitter 'Tweet' or something more all-encompassing like the 'ShareThis' bar.

Likewise, links from social media channels offer more value than they ever have previously.

Case and point, while I wouldn't make social media the centrifuge of my SEO efforts, I would be mindful of it and use its value to complement your current SEO activities.

[Zoolander]

Social signals are the nearest thing to crawlers having human eyes.  There's a pie chart somewhere on SEOmoz about this, I think social was about 7% of what search engines take into account.