We'd like to revisit social signals for your website.
A "social signal" is an internet service or feature that allows you to share your web pages to other members within your online circle of friends.
Wikipedia currently maintains a list of 198 popular social networking websites. Each of them has their own method of sharing links and information amongst friends.
Search engines are slowly tapping into the popular social networking sites and beginning to measure and include intra-member communications (i.e. sharing and liking) in organic search results.
According to Wikipedia the top social websites listed by member totals are:
1. Facebook
2. Qzone (China)
3. Habbo (teen website)
4. Twitter
5. Windows Live
6. Bebo
7. Vkonatakte (Russia)
8. Tagged
9. Orkut
10. LinkedIn
Facebook and Twitter already have dominance around the web with their share/like buttons. LinkedIn wants professional users to share their professional content. Reddit and Digg are just other popular sharing buttons found on many sites.
For jewelry websites, there is no doubt any more that you need to include sharing buttons on the product detail pages for every jewelry item. You also need to include them on your educational pages, blog, online articles and especially your newsletters.
Facebook allows Bing to tap into all the socially shared content. Google only reads open Facebook business pages and the shared information there. Google also reads shared Twitter links.
According to a recent survey by SEOMoz.org, they report that 89% of SEO professionals believe socially shared content will become increasingly more important to organic ranking. Yes, we're in that 89%.
In conclusion, we'd like to see social widgets become as popular within the jewelry industry as they have become in all other industries. These widgets increase engagement and online influence between you and your customers. The earlier you add them to your website the better off you will be. Tomorrow we'll give you a specific example we've been tracking for a few years.
