Social rank, in search engine marketing terms, refers to the reputation and rank that come with social network activity and trends. Having lots of likes, mentions on social media sites, and links to your site from social media sites will boost your search engine ranking, according to this principle.
However, some have recently stated that social rank is either useless or on its way to obsolescence due to the subjectivity of evaluating social rank, as well as the alleged ease of manipulating social media activity to boost social rank. The following blog post will evaluate the pros and cons of social rank.
CONS
There are some legitimate concerns to be had about the viability of social rank, including subjectivity and manipulation.
Subjectivity: A ‘like’ button seems simple on the surface – the person either likes the link or not. However, it is actually very ambiguous. Did the person really like the link, or did he feel pressured in some way to give the person positive feedback?
A like can obscure more than it reveals – perhaps someone sends a person a link to something as a joke, and the recipient presses the ‘like’ button – it may appear that he likes whatever was being discussed, but he was actually being sarcastic.
- The number of friends can be misleading as well – how many people on your friends list are actually influenced by your posts. Perhaps you write interesting posts that people like to respond to, but then immediately forget about.
Manipulation: Likes can be easily obtained – offer deals or discounts for ‘liking’ products, create fake accounts to give your social media posts favorable feedback, or even just pay legitimate profiles to like your posts; the list goes on and on. These are serious concerns that need to be taken into consideration.
PROS
Despite these problems, many social media marketing companies still see a lot of value in social rank. Social media sites dominate the Internet, and are the main platform through which people now discover websites and information. Like all aspects of SEO, social rank can be very useful if properly executed. Quality content will generate leads, as can be seen in the number of likes, positive feedback, and so on.
An interesting blog post will likely receive more likes and be sent as a link to others than a poorly written one. You will have to make use of all the tools of search engine optimization, including quality SEO content writing in order to spur organic growth.
What are your thoughts on Social Rank, does it help in building a strong reputation for your brand or service online.
This is a guest post by Eric Smith, who writes about SEO and social media marketing. If you want to guest post, check out the guidelines here.
Image Credit: Matt Hamm
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