Is Tumblr being used as a social algorithm for Bing and Google?

[Shawn124]

Hi Y'all,

Bing uses Pinterest as part of its image search by using pins of users...But what about Tumblr?  Is Tubmlr still a good source for a ranking factor when pointing an image link to your blog?

Our industry is pretty boring, so we would get a few clicks here and there a month, but nothing compared to Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest...but overall is Tumblr a good backlink every time a blog is posted for search algorithms?

[lautman]

Shawn,

Good question, although to me it seems like there are actually two questions in there.  Social signals and backlinks are not quite the same things.  Social signals arise when a link to your content is tweeted, pinned or shared on Facebook.  These links are all (or nearly all) rel=nofollow, so they don't pass any authority to your site.  Some folks think that social signals will affect your rankings,but earlier this year Matt Cutts made it quite clear that they don't.  The value of social is then as a new source of traffic -  and it can be especially valuable in terms of lead generation and list-building.  Now, a post that does well on social media might attract some traditional backlinks, but it isn't the social sharing itself that will improve rankings.

If you can find the right vibe on Tumblr (and you do, or you will be ignored), the community there is very active.  Just like every other social site, the links are nofollow.  You can hack this by hard coding a link to your site into your Tumblr's template.  I'm not sure how well it works.  I did this as an experiment, and the links don't show up in Moz or Webmaster Tools.

So... after all that.... If the you want to reach the people using Tumblr, go ahead and Tumbl away.  Don't do it for "SEO" though.

Hope that helps.

Michael