Ranking without links but through Social Media popularity

[Carla_Dawson]

Does anyone have an example of a web page that is ranking soley through social media popularity and does not have any inbound (website to website) links? I am creating a presentation on SEO and Social Media and it would be great to have an example.

Thanks

Carla

[RohitPalit]

I don't think Google directly takes social media signals into consideration. More social shares generally indicate better rankings, but it's generally a co-relation: http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors

More social shares = more exposure = more chances of attracting links

[Carla_Dawson]

Thanks Rohit

I agree with you but I am looking for a real example. Everyone seems to be talking about this but I need the real example for a presentation I am creating. Thanks!

Carla

[FRUTIKO]

Without inbound links it shouldnt be that possible to rank well with just social media. It is possible to improve or lead with help of it but shouldnt be just enough to be popular and rank well.

If there is some example for it would be great to learn.

Good luck with your presentation Carla

Frutiko Team

[Christy-Correll]

Hi Carla, it's extremely difficult to use social media without creating links -- regardless of your intention (see http://moz.com/blog/the-top-4-ways-to-use-social-media-to-earn-links-whiteboard-friday.) This is as close to an example that I know of, though: http://moz.com/blog/life-after-google-is-now-9-pieces-of-advice-on-how-a-new-site-can-succeed-without-search. Hope that helps!

Christy

[Carla_Dawson]

Hi Christy,

Thanks for getting back to me. I did not express myself well in the question I posted. I am looking for a webpage that ranked only though incoming social media links and not from other webpages. Many well known experts have been posting for awhile that social media will impact your SEO and I agree with this. It would be really nice though to find an example of this. I am trying to find this example so I can do an article about it. Thanks!

Carla

[Christy-Correll]

Hi Carla,

Ah, I see what you mean now. Thank you for clarifying. I am revising my own answer to this: "It would be a very unusual case for a webpage to earn links from social media without earning them from other types of web pages as well." That said, I will ask some colleagues if they know of a case study and report back to you!

Christy

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Sorry I don't have any good examples of universal organic rankings. You might have better results with personalized rankings, i.e. Google+ posts. http://moz.com/blog/using-google-plus-to-appear-in-the-top-results-every-time-whiteboard-friday

As Christy mentioned, it's very hard to find these types of results in the wild as any page with decent social metrics is linked to by aggregators like Topsy, All-top, etc.

We did do an experiment on this a couple of years ago. http://moz.com/blog/do-tweets-still-effect-rankings

[DaveSottimano]

I had help from the UK seo community doing a Google +1 experiment recently - it's a bit silly but I think this is what you're looking for. http:// [www] davidsottimano [.com] /gareth-hoyle-sexiest-man-alive/ (purposely not a link!). I think it had around 40-50 +1's last time I checked.

Ranks #4-#5 https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=gareth+hoyle&gl=uk

Feel free to use it if it suits you.

[Carla_Dawson]

Thanks Cyrus for getting back to me. I will look into the info you posted.

[Carla_Dawson]

Hi David

Great experiment! lol...Thanks for sharing and yes this is what I was looking for.

Have you tried removing the keyword " Gareth Hoyle" from the title to see if it still ranks? Ok I also wonder if this still would have worked if your domain authority was a bit lower..

Thanks for sharing

Carla