Is social networking really worth all the effort?

[LeeC]

Isn't this suggesting that the benefits from social are more to do with out reaching than "organic rankings", atleast directly, which takes us right back to my original question, e.g. what's the point if the referrals are mimimal or none.

After reading this article I wonder if more can still be gained from producing good content on our blogs, operating our own social networks (i.e. a forum) or atleast using social to drive people to our forums or blogs, although from my experience, people that use facebook don't like using private networks (as a general rule) - I have facebook and twitter login apps at my forums and they've not been used once.

email is still a major form of social for me, I get more than 50, sometimes close to a hundred personal emails every day, from strangers, clients, potential clients,  members and users. I've made a great many friends, gained some lucrative deals from this means of contact - simple but very effective.

I still plan to start a Facebook group as you suggested, I'll also give it my all, but still I think there are better, more honest and personal ways of communicating with people and developing stronger, valuable and lasting relationships.

Do you have a blog Monica and have you tried anything else other than social? You might be surprised at how this can be of benefit.

I've also found it trememdously beneficial to offer something for free, as you know people love free stuff, which also helps drive traffic to guides and tutorial pages and when they get stuck they join the forum, at which point the social part kicks in, I can display my kindness, politeness and willingness to help no matter what.

From this people realise that I'm trustworthy and every once in a while (so far its been about once a month) I land a business deal. OK its quite some marketing funnel, but it works, not as well as I'd like, hence why I've joined Moz.

Best, Lee

[MonicaOConnor]

So, I actually didn't get to the right page. The Forbes Quote of the day is what I thought you were sharing. I will read this over and let you know what I think. Sorry, that was a total blonde moment.

[LeeC]

lol

[MonicaOConnor]

Most social media links are no follow links, especially Facebook and Twitter. Social links aren't meant to be a  back linking strategy. The social signals build trust, and validate whether or not a website is really a business. In 2013 about 7% of ranking factors were related to social signals. I think in 2014 that number didn't really change, but I expect it to in the coming year.

http://imgur.com/a6bG748

Since no one knows the exact SEO recipe there is speculation to exactly how social plays a part in success. I can tell you from experience, a strong social presence helps your organic rankings. I have seen it work for companies, and I have seen companies without a social presence rank as well. Since these platforms are so interactive, there really isn't a better trust signal than a strong, engaging presence.

[LeeC]

If Matts cuts is to be believed (personally I don't trust Google at all) high rankings have more to do with the fact that the content was good and thus was shared at numerous other locations, and the social links where just coincidental and played no part in the rankings.

I'm not denying the benefits of social to you or the other guy that commented earlier, I'm just saying that I haven't seen any benefits, not in rankings or in out reaching from using mainstream forms of social.

Incidentally, I wonder, how do you guage how social signals have improved your rankings?

[MonicaOConnor]

Let's talk about November:

I had 12 shares of products on my site, three messages on Facebook, 124 likes, 20 comments and 18 shares in November.

My total post reach socially was over 22,000.

I received 87 visits from social networks for a total revenue of $36k.

My domain authority increased 4 points with no back linking. (I don't do a lot of back linking right now)

Even without the revenue and traffic an increase of 4 points in my domain authority was well worth the 6 hours I spent on social media last month, wouldn't you say? I measure the success of my social campaigns first by engagement, then by domain authority, and finally by revenue and traffic.

[LeeC]

Awesome answer Monica, I've seen enough, sorry to throw that small spanner in the works, but your evidence seems to suggest otherwise, appreciate the share

[MonicaOConnor]

No need to apologize, I like a good SEO debate! If I can offer any other suggestions don't hesitate to ask.

[LeeC]

Will do

[LeeC]

What can I say other that WOW, WOW, WOW!!!

Moz Analytics shows an increase of 750% in social traffic in one week.

Way to go Monica, I owe you a coffee, you were spot on

[Cocoonfxmedia]

Hi Lee

James is my name

SSL adds trust to the user, Google has also hinted that they're more likely to rank you higher.  GEOTrust is scanning for Malware its an experiment to see if this gives more trust to the user and also if it slows down the site, no evidence in trust, but site speed no effect.  SSL has improved rankings on all keywords within weeks of installing.

bounce rate at the moment is high as our site design isn't user friendly and the content is a little dated. In fact the design is 2.5 years old. Oue new design will be ready in a few days and new content. I would say below 40% is ok. Ideally we would like around 20%

[LeeC]

Hi James,

have been considering ssl for a while, maybe time to make the switch, thanks for the share.

Have been struggling with bounce ever since organic overtook referrals, is pretty hard to create product documentation and get people to move to another page, especially as most bookmark the pages and close the page when they've finished reading.

Having blog pages has helped and since including a forum bounch has dropped, but still a little over 40%.

Good luck with the new site launch, hope it goes well for you