what is the value of Social Signals in SEO

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation has come a long way since it first became a necessity in getting your information listed near the top of SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) In the beginning it was purely in-page SEO, and that was fine.

but things have changed drastically see video at bottom of page

Along came the advent of Facebook and the social media revolution which changed the way that we as people communicate in ways that are still being investigated and documented. Many other social media platforms jumped up and started having an influence on information sharing and information flow between people at alarming speeds. People were suddenly sharing a whole lot of stuff online that did not make sense to businesses as it was purely of a social nature with people discussing things like

• where they would be spending the week end
• what we will be eating for lunch
• who is having an affair with my cousin
• what colour dress should be worn to a party
• what music is pleasant and what is crappy to listen to
• their personal love life
• their personal thoughts and social affairs
• whats going on at the office when the boss is out
• what movies to watch
• where I waste my spare time

This information was indexed in search engines and because of the size of the base web site that the social media platforms operated, and the size of the user base of these social platforms, results suddenly started appearing at the top of SERP's (Search Engine Results Pages) for many keywords and keyword phrases, which carried very little value to the person making the search request. 

Soon the marketing world stepped into the social media arena and started direct online marketing within the social media with alarming  results. These results were at first confusing to many within the search industry, especially those involved in SEO for web sites. The major search engines picked this up and started adding the value of social signals to their algorithms with strange results as they were very experimental.

As the search industry came to grips with the impact of the social media on search patterns things started to settle down and an understanding of how social signals should be interpreted by search engines began to emerge. At Info4u we realised that these changes required an integrated approach to all online marketing, as most SEA's (Search Engine Algorithms) use a large variety of issues from different locations to determine the value of any specific page before placing it in any SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

Info4u thus coined the acronym FUFISM or Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media  to describe the our approach to all online marketing, as the Search Industry now requires a lot more information from you to place your online information anywhere near the top of its SERP's.

This short video by slingshot (www.slingshotseo.com) found at http://www.business2community.com  discusses some of the related issues focusing on social media issues around social signals and SEO

link building help

 Link building is an important part of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) that is very often over looked and usually not considered as part of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

this post in www.searchengineland.com is relevant to link building and really worth a read 

Link building is one of the most important parts of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and great care should be taken to ensure that it has success.  You should apply FUFISM or Functional User Friendly Integrated Social Media tactics for best results.

The social media arena is a great source of links and all your social media campaigns should link to specific pages within your company website and carry links to the main landing pages as well.

Social signals are just fancy words for talking about special types of links, and these social signals carry a lot more weight than standard links from normal web sites. It is thus very important that your social media campaign generate some social signals for your website, and that you have reciprocal links from your web site and blog with your social media campaigns.

Every social media platform has a special section where you can develop specialised links that come with branded images 4u2 (for you to) place in your other online platforms like blogs, websites or forums. it is important for your SEOV (Search Engine Optimisation Value) that you do this, as out bound links also add considerable SEOV (Search Engine Optimisation Value) to your online efforts in every platform.


Good content and well managed user interfaces where your online customer base can communicate with you in a manner that pleases them will also result in many organic (natural) links to your pages placed by your information users (customers) within their preferred user platforms such as

a) their own web sites
b) their own blogs
c) their own social media platforms
d) user forums
e) comments in your blogs or other social media

If your customers talk about you in a positive way your will be shocked at the online coverage this generates. So give them a reason to say positive things about you by having good feed back mechanisms in place then monitor these with great care and enthusiasm. Remember to be social on social media platforms and not to push the marketing as this is a social turn off, keep the conversations going as long as possible, placing links to relevant areas of your web sites and blogs within the conversations, as this is a major source of inbound links to your other online information.

Link exchange programs with your suppliers and your resellers is also a very good idea, though this can be a very tedious and extremely time consuming affair, the effort is really worth while. Take the time and you will not be sorry.

for more info send email to seo@info4u.co.za or visit www.info4u.co.za/fufism