Are Backlinks still relevant or are Social Signals taking over?
Well it’s no surprise that Matt Cutts (Google’s Head or Search Spam) was hit with the big question, “Do these Links still work?” when interviewed by Danny Sullivan at the SMX Advance 2012.
The Question proposed to Matt Cutts was, are Links still relevant or are Social Signals becoming the new BackLink? Matt replied with a great analogy on how large space is and how the largest data source in the world, (The World Wide Web), can only take up a very small amount of space in relation to how much Data is truly out there or yet to be created. Matt then explained that yes Social Signals are very important and there importance is increasing, yet the Link is still very alive and active and it is way too early to exhaust the importance of the “Link”. This was a great interview by Danny Sullivan and worth taking a look at.
I feel there are may different takes you can have on the response from Matt Cutts. I do feel that he is correct, there is so much Data out there and Links have been such an important part of bringing that Data together and Linking related information. It would be hard to imagine that all those “connections to data” or “Links” can just fade away over night. Matt Cutts did say that he can see the relevance of a Social Signal becoming more important than a Link in about 10 years, but for now don’t exhaust the importance of the link.
This question of Links versus Social Signals has been on my mind for some time now. I don’t think that Google or any of the Big 3 Search Engines will announce any time soon that Social Signals are the new form of a Quality Backlink, but from the research and expierenments that I have been perfroming, Social Signals are for real and do hold an extreme amount of relevance in increasing search engine positioning. Social Signals will NOT take you to page 1 Google over night, those days are gone, but with Microdata becoming a huge factor in the new Google Knowledge Graph, maybe having multiple Social Media accounts can increase your Microdata and in turn increase your Website importance to Google…….just a theory, but food for thought.
By: Brandyn Garske