Social signals are indicators of a webpage’s popularity, usefulness, and credibility, derived from user interactions on social media platforms. These consist of metrics such as likes, shares, comments, and other forms of engagement.
With the expansion of social media, certain user interactions are monitored and can influence a page’s organic search visibility. The act of a user liking or sharing content from a website suggests that the page contains valuable information. Search engine algorithms factor this type of positive user engagement into their complex process of determining the most relevant and valuable pages to display.
Consider two websites that rank similarly for a given set of keywords. If one has minimal social engagement while the other has hundreds of likes and shares, search engines are capable of recognizing the value in those sustained interactions and may boost the rankings of the page with the greater social support.