SEO & Social Signals

[YellowHats]

Hi,

I am working for a client that has a massive social presence (like MASSIVE) and is coming out with a new product line and a new website for that product line. I am on the team doing the SEO for this new product in a couple of different countries.

I have done a decent amount of SEO, both whitehat and blackhat, but have never really used social signals to get ahead. With all the talk of how much more important this is going to be to Google, I am trying to figure out how to best leverage the competitive advantage this client has.

Being as they are a big company with a product they want to run with for many years, I was hoping I could get some pointers on how to leverage social signals in whitehat ways. Specifically, is it better to make FB, G+ pages and get people to follow the pages or to put a like and G+ button on the website and get people to like or plus the site?

Facebook: The company will make a page for the new product which will probably get a decent amount of followers and have links pointing back to the website. Is there a way to leverage this SEO-wise? Would it help more to just have a facebook 'like' button pointing to the homepage of the website? Should the effort go into getting followers of the facebook page or into getting people to click the website's like button?
Twitter: Share a link button? Mention button? Follow Button?
G+: I don't even have a G+ account so I really have no clue what goes down there. Make a page for the new product and get people to follow that? Stick a G+ button on the site?
Youtube: Product will have its own channel with relevant vids. Anything more to do here than stick a backlink in the vid description?
Pinterest:Worth doing anything with?
Anything Else?

Edit: If I go with buttons like & share a link buttons as opposed to follow & mention buttons, should I point them all to the website's homepage or to whatever page they're on?

Glad for any advice! Thanks BHW...

 

[the_demon]

To be honest, I wouldn't concentrate too much on the social signals. To date I've only seen minimal evidence of social signals having a significant impact.

There are very few well put together case studies about using social signals and of the available case studies there's no conclusive result as they tend to have varying degrees of success if any.

Also, since your client is going to naturally have a good amount of real social signals to their product I think it would be a waste of time to focus on this.

 

[jbinkley]

Agree with the comment about the impact of social.
Backlinks are still the way to go, so keep your focus on "normal" SEO and let the social part grow naturally.

 

[conceptsti]

agreed social signals do effect the rankings but it's very little. Go with old school link building

 

[Rotem Guez]

if anyone can help plz do

The demon and jbinkley just did

 

[vaservices]

Not much impact now. Before I used G+ and see the good signal of rank but after short time, all looks like disappreance.
Now I think facebook, Twitter, youtube and pinterest is also good. For pinterrest, just create account to upload images to your board and pin it. I love youtube with account, create a chanel and upload your video to.

 

[Laubster]

Also, since your client is going to naturally have a good amount of real social signals to their product I think it would be a waste of time to focus on this.

Exactly, if they're getting signals naturally there's no point in buying them. That's like buying links when you gets tons of free links naturally.

 

[Vekkata]

From what I see, social signals are very important. Pinterest and google+.

my 2 cent