Social media is better for showing finished products, less for the path to purchase Social media is also universally touted as essential in today's marketing environment. Certainly, published content such as media, news, articles, and blogs are highly dependent on social media. Yet, based on Google search results, social media signals are much less important for e-commerce, finance, and even travel. The distinction may be that users like to share their travel experiences after the fact, not while they plan a trip - or show off a new watch they bought on social media, not where they bought it. have purchased. If the end can justify the means, it does not always justify the sharing of the means. 4. Look for backlinks from relevant sources This finding is an extrapolation of the Finance websites' social media signal results in the Searchmetrics study. While Facebook signals were only one-fifth of the benchmark for Finance websites, LinkedIn signals were highly Shadow Making correlated, 70% higher than the benchmark. Thus, general rules regarding social network signals cannot be established. Rather, it is social media signals from the right or relevant sources that matter. Backlinks are widely researched for their SEO value, but the same logic applies to backlinks. If you're a bike shop and you get a backlink from a website that caters to triathletes, that's a quality backlink. A link from a deep sea fishing website, not so much. 5. Use common sense in verticals too The concept that one size does not fit all is true even in verticals. There are many variable subgroups within the verticals where results may deviate from the norm. For example, while social media signals are not strongly correlated with search results in travel, an exception would be for a site that relies heavily on referrals. Wedding venues or destination planners can benefit much more from social signals than the typical travel site. 6. Consumers will expect good content Google's focus on load time and its AMP format has led to general advice on improving page rankings by creating faster web pages.