Anyone seen REAL proof that White Hat & Social Signals leads to rankings ?

[masterfish]

Trying to be a good, clean SEO, I have been spending the last two and a half years focusing a lot on building up solid social communities on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest and YouTube.

Back when I began doing this, I believed that old school link-building was on its way out, and that, to stay on the 'clean', White Hat side of Google, social was the way to go for future success in organic search.

But my main competitor is STILL buying links left and right, and has absolutely no social media following...and he's kicking my butt more and more in the rankings. And I seem to be losing out with my strategy.

So I would really like to know: have any of you experienced proof, first hand, that you can win with SEO by focusing on social signals, and by letting NATURAL, earned links pretty much take care of themselves, by trying to create good content?

Because I am FRUSTRATED.

I thought I was being one of the good guys. I thought I was going the safer, risk-free way to success. And I knew it would take me longer to become successful this way...but it's been YEARS now, and I still don't see any signs of it happening any time soon !

[EGOL]

So... are you working hard to improve and increase the content offerings of your website or are you spending all of your time trying to build a fire on social media?

If I want my website to take off I spend my time working on content to build a fire there... and if I am doing a great job of that the people who visit the website spread the word about my content on social media with zero work from me.   If that isn't happening then maybe the content is less than inspiring or the topics are chest-thumping promos that nobody cares about.

[JMacSupply]

I have seen proof that white hat SEO leads to rankings.

I have not seen proof that Social Signals alone will lead to rankings.  I agree with EGOL - you should focus your attention on the quality of the content, and possibly more white-hat link building, rather than going ALL-IN on social.

[SEO5Team]

You may want to exercise the option of reporting your site to Google so they can take a closer look at the search results associated with your site.

Google Survey for Small Sites

[LynnPatchett]

Agree with EGOL in regards paying attention to your content first and foremost.

That being said,  you might want to have a quick look at the 2013 ranking survey here: http://moz.com/blog/ranking-factors-2013. Still a lot of factors in play of which social is only one.

[Kurt_Steinbrueck]

Of course we've seen results from whitehat SEO.  That's not to say that blackhat SEO doesn't work, too.  Afterall, who would take such a risk if it didn't work...but it is a big risk.  Many sites using blackhat techniques wake up one morning to find their site's rankings are in the toilet or worse.

The rest of the advice that's been offered is good.  Create truly good content that's valuable or entertaining and build up your audience.  Whitehat SEO does work; however, Whitehat SEO with unoriginal, boring content, doesn't work so well.  And like SEO 5 Team said, if you know your competition is violating the guidelines, report them.  Beyond just the small business reporting, you can actually submit a spam report:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en

Kurt Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com