Social Signals are no joke - Post-Penguin SEO

[Abstroose]

So after hearing all the speculations regarding social signals and SEO, I decided to perform my own case study.

Objective: To study social triggers and measure the effects of social sharing on SEO.

I won't reveal my exact domain or keywords, but here are some details:

• Primary keyword has 15k exact global searches
• Secondary keyword has 110k exact global searches
• Domain is an EMD
• Domain is about 6 months old

This is a fairly competitive technology niche. Very similar to 'iPad reviews' or 'Xbox 360' reviews. My primary keyword is plural, secondary keyword is singular. I bought the EMD 6 months ago, through up two unique articles, optimised the Wordpress theme, did very little/basic link building (2 or 3 SEnuke campaigns). The site got indexed but never ranked for anything. I didn't have time for the site and just left it dormant for 6 months with no updates or new backlinks.

10 days ago I started my case study. Here's exactly what I did:

• Uploaded a 400 word article
• Got 350 +1s to blog post (fiverr link)
• Got 1000 retweets (fiverr link)
• Got 40 FB shares, 40 retweets, 30 G+ shares (fiverr link)

Rankings before case study
Primary keyword: 0
Secondary keyword: 0

After 1 week
Primary keyword: 6
Secondary keyword: 69

After 10 days
Primary keyword: 5
Secondary keyword: 13

As you can see, the results were pretty damn conclusive. I have done no other backlinking. The site has only a few backlinks. I only started tracking traffic 3 days ago because I didn't expect results like this. Been getting 50 uniques a day at the moment. Just thrown some CPA on to the site earlier today so will report back with any revenue soon. My plan is to post a new article bi-weekly and repeat the process. Also testing this on another site which was ranking #5 prior to Penguin, and now nowhere to be seen.

Will report back with any news.

 

[sam.hunt0710]

Moving in the right direction, social is the next SEO

 

[Itachi93]

abstroose

Thanks for the case study. We need more people like you on this forum, people who shares their case study.

 

[PeaceLoveSubmission1]

Nicee, thanks for sharing links also. Its done well to get to 6 though from only a small amount of social signals. Whats the comp like?

 

[Abstroose]

Moving in the right direction, social is the next SEO

Absolutely. A combination of a high quality backlink profile for relevance and a broad social status for prominence is the future of SEO.

Nicee, thanks for sharing links also. Its done well to get to 6 though from only a small amount of social signals. Whats the comp like?

Let's just say the competition include cnet, techradar and gizmodo.

 

[Mortz]

We're starting to lean that direction too. We're still back linking, however, we did a burst of some FB likes across our product pages and noticed a burst in SERP ranks. We stopped the social linking and things tapered downward again. We started a new social linking drip across all our pages and we're seeing nice movement once again.

 

[shravandude]

Thanks for the case study. We need more people like you on this forum, people who shares their case study.

I have done a case study 3 months ago with likes, +1s and tweets but unfortunately it is in Jr.VIP not for public.
Appreciate @Abstroose for sharing this info.
I feel like social signals would be the next generation SEO.

 

[lancis]

I experienced something alike with social backlinking, the problem was - it was short term. E.q. once you stop you disappear from the SERP.
Curious to see if the same will happen to your site.

 

[Abstroose]

That is my speculation also. I am going to repeat this process a couple more times until I get desired results, and then I will cease all social activity for a month and measure the effects.

 

[dunk15us]

Were these directly to the blog post or to the root domain?

• Got 1000 retweets (fiverr link)
• Got 40 FB shares, 40 retweets, 30 G+ shares (fiverr link)

Thanks

 

[directaxcess]

I was under the impression that purchasing fake +1's would actually lower your traffic... weird.

 

[Abstroose]

Were these directly to the blog post or to the root domain?

• Got 1000 retweets (fiverr link)
• Got 40 FB shares, 40 retweets, 30 G+ shares (fiverr link)

Thanks

All directly to the blog post (since naturally this is what would happen).

 

[supapera]

I was under the impression that purchasing fake +1's would actually lower your traffic... weird.

obviously it depends how google see those +1's

thanks Abstoorse for case study

 

[Expertpeon]

Social signals do NOT work from my experience, especially on their own.

I have a twitter account creator, facebook account creator and share/retweet bots... I've tried this across not a mere 1000 retweets, but well over 100,000, and a lot of the accounts have over 5000 followers.

Google +1 is a great way to piss off google as well... I created a bot to do it, and it just seems to piss off google (and has no effect on the page itself either).
The only thing I haven't tried is G+ shares and it could potentially matter given google's self-masturbatory policies.

Creating 20-30k facebook accounts is actually rather easy... it'll just take a few days.

 

[shravandude]

I was under the impression that purchasing fake +1's would actually lower your traffic... weird.

In my experience it should be a combo of other social signals as well.
With just fake +1s you would see minimal or no improvement.

 

[GiftGuru]

I have raised sites EXCLUSIVELY through social sharing (mainly twitter) now for over 2 years. I don't use anything else.

Penguin? Panda? Panther? P%#$#&$?

What are these things? They have nothing to do with me. Not only do I get the clicks and conversions (although conversion is usually lower) but social sharing is straight ass SERP juice.

Good post

 

[Abstroose]

Social signals do NOT work from my experience, especially on their own.

I have a twitter account creator, facebook account creator and share/retweet bots... I've tried this across not a mere 1000 retweets, but well over 100,000, and a lot of the accounts have over 5000 followers.

Google +1 is a great way to piss off google as well... I created a bot to do it, and it just seems to piss off google (and has no effect on the page itself either).
The only thing I haven't tried is G+ shares and it could potentially matter given google's self-masturbatory policies.

Creating 20-30k facebook accounts is actually rather easy... it'll just take a few days.

Well this is the reason for the case study - to provide statistic, evidence and facts. I have been pessimistic myself and had doubts, hence why I haven't taken much notice of social signals till now. I didn't expect any results, but the numbers are all there. Who really knows what does and does not​ work? I'm just providing the case study.

 

[Expertpeon]

I have raised sites EXCLUSIVELY through social sharing (mainly twitter) now for over 2 years. I don't use anything else.

Penguin? Panda? Panther? P%#$#&$?

What are these things? They have nothing to do with me. Not only do I get the clicks and conversions (although conversion is usually lower) but social sharing is straight ass SERP juice.

Good post

I'd like to believe this could work, because it would be so easy to rank sites that it's silly, but my experience is 180 degrees opposite on this one.

Well this is the reason for the case study - to provide statistic, evidence and facts. I have been pessimistic myself and had doubts, hence why I haven't taken much notice of social signals till now. I didn't expect any results, but the numbers are all there. Who really knows what does and does not​ work? I'm just providing the case study.

I certainly appreciate your work on this ... I am curious so I'm going to wind out a large month long campaign on a site in a very very competitive niche and see if dripping out thousands/day for a full month will have positive effects.
I'm definitely not hopeful.

 

[Windmill]

I hope social signals are the new big thing in SEO, because it seems easy enough to manipulate and also pretty cheap to outsource. You just run an empire of accounts, hahaha!

At the same time though, if people purchase cheap/low-cost likes/retweets now, in the future that may just not fly tbh and its leaving a footprint that is just waiting to be slapped by an update next year. But blackhat wise... very good!

 

[Expertpeon]

I hope social signals are the new big thing in SEO, because it seems easy enough to manipulate and also pretty cheap to outsource. You just run an empire of accounts, hahaha!

At the same time though, if people purchase cheap/low-cost likes/retweets now, in the future that may just not fly tbh and its leaving a footprint that is just waiting to be slapped by an update next year. But blackhat wise... very good!

Truly, creating 10k+ tweets and 100k+ retweets every day is so easy, I cannot imagine this will continue to be valuable, even if it is now.
My experiences show that it doesn't work anyway.