Social Signals - Do They Justify Links?

I would summarize my opinion on this topic like this:
  • Social Signals (Likes, Retweets, Hearts) have zero impact on SEO.
  • Brand Signals (sameAs profiles on social media sites) have a great impact on SEO.
I'm assuming you're talking about SEO because your title says "Do They Justify Links?" but I'm not entirely sure what you're asking even there.

You later ask if they add value, and I think @CCarter lays it out clearly that having a branded presence across the web in various vehicles of media delivery (video, image, tweet, sound) all help. With EEAT becoming grossly overweighted, it definitely is worth maintaining at least a very basic presence where you build out the profiles and flesh them out with the occasional post.

But I think there's also a reason you don't see SEO's being focused (at all, like zero attention) to all the old Twitter and Facebook API's to figure out how much engagements each post got. That was all the rage for a while, and now it has disappeared. I think we can listen to the wisdom of the crowd sometimes, and this is one of those times (sometimes the crowd is completely wrong, too).

But most certainly, a social media presence is part of the bread and butter of a marketing campaign in the present age. It'll result in traffic (which can be an SEO factor as was pointed out in the SERPWoo post), it'll result in brand impressions on eyeballs and ears and into brains, that traffic can result in further shares or links, etc. Marketing has an indirect and very effective impact on SEO. It's part of what Google wants to measure as their algorithm gets more and more fragmented.
 
Ryuzaki said:
brand impressions on eyeballs and ears and into brains
Click to expand...

Like @Ryuzaki states, it's literally where your audience is, whether you like it or not.

If TikTok.com gets more traffic than Google.com isn't enough proof than you are just looking for an excuse to be lazy. The path of least resistance with SEO is no longer cheap.

Adapt or die. It's been that way since the dawn of time.

@AlexR you can no longer negotiate out of this. The average Western world user spends a staggering 6-8 hours on social media, DAILY. That's a lot of missed opportunities to be part of the conversation within your industry.

The people advertising in the Yellow Pages/phonebook thought the internet was a fade and too complicated. They're all gone like the dinosaurs now. Stick to SEO without other marketing channels and you'll be a dinosaur and gone within 1-5 years.
 
Thanks for the great responses.

@Ryuzaki and @CCarter I 100% agree they're a great traffic source.

I was more asking if social signals can 'unlock' links?

Let's say you build 10 links to a page that has 0 shares/social engagement.
vs building 10 links to a page that has some social engagement.

It seems weird that a page could get links but not social signals. Thus, could the links be dampened by a lack of social signals?

Sorry for now being clear...
 
AlexR said:
Let's say you build 10 links to a page that has 0 shares/social engagement.
vs building 10 links to a page that has some social engagement.
Click to expand...

There are plenty of scenarios where a website gets links first, then social signals follow, if any. For example, press releases or outreach or interview links, etc.. I don't think social signals like shares, likes will damper the power of links.

They might (the social signals), get you noticed by someone who will link back to your post, but let's face it. The chances of that are low to none. People on social media are there for entertainment. They aren't looking for reliable sources for their articles.

The only reason we are pushing content to social is to get traffic (priority #1) and hopefully some branding signals.
 
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