Studies showing that social sharing does/doesn't affect rankings?

[QubaSEO]

I'm currently researching this area in order to show to a client that social shares aren't as valuable for SEO as they might think. Can anyone point me in the direction of the best studies done on this topic?

Thanks in advance!

[ZoeRigley]

Hi,

I'd say Moz' 2015 ranking factors study is great for this, particularly the correlation section. If you scroll to 'Social and Brand Features', there's a graph showing correlations between rankings and shares, broken down by social platform. I've always found this incredibly insightful and useful!

Also the latest Whiteboard Friday, and related Buzzsumo collaboration study, are slightly on a tangent but both very insightful, they investigate any correlation between social shares & backlinks, and touch on the correlations with rankings.

Edit: of course, correlation isn't causation. You might also want to mention this video from Matt Cutts, in which he explains that social signals, like shares, +1s etc, aren't directly factored into algorithms.

I hope this helps! Interested to see anything others might post here too. 
Zoe

[ClaytonJ]

Make them watch this.  This video is what I show them.  Not 100% correct as social media does have seo value. But it is an absolute rip snorter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2NUayn2vP0

Hope this assists.

[QubaSEO]

Thanks John, I'll take a look at the video. When you say "social media does have an SEO value" do you mean that you believe that shares directly affect rankings? If so what evidence have you used to come to this conclusion?

[QubaSEO]

Thanks Zoe!

Moz are careful to point  out that their social results are correlation and likely to be because of a link between content that is shared heavily also achieving  links (the real cause of good rankings).

i know that  the recent Buzzsumo report highlights that  this is not necessarilly the case but still...

[ClaytonJ]

The video will switch you off social media forever - so be warned.

I see social media impact in creating links, and generally driving traffic to websites. Social media when done well with seo in mind can be beneficial.  To my knowledge that is not in dispute.  I just find it not as costs effective as content creation and technical.

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[QubaSEO]

Thanks Josh. Great video. This would match up with what SearchMetrics concluded in their ranking factors study.

I'm astonished by the number of SEOs that assume social shares are a ranking factor. You've only got to look at Moz's survey to see that people still think so despite no-one (that i've seen) having conclusive evidence.

It kind of feels like a share should help rankings so that might explain Moz's study of SEO's. BUT we all know that a share is a hell of a lot easier to get and much easier to manipulate than even links. If Google arent looking at them I guess this explain why.

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[QubaSEO]

I hear you loud and clear re. studying different query spaces.

Do we know that in those query spaces where social shares correlate it is not actually down to links i.e can we remove the influence of links from the studies?

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