Social shares have zero correlation with SEO success
Today’s opinion post is by Mike Turner, Senior Content Marketer at Oasis Beverages. He has over 15 years of experience in marketing, SEO, and analytics.
After spending years in SEO trenches, I’ve watched countless marketers chase social metrics like they’re digital gold. Social shares seem like the perfect validation - quantifiable, immediate, ego-boosting. But here’s the reality I’ve learned through hard experience: they don’t move the SEO needle one bit.
I remember obsessing over share counts back in 2018, convinced they’d boost our rankings. The data told a different story. Zero correlation between shares and SEO success. None. Pretty humbling when you’ve built strategies around it.
Social shares operate in their own universe, completely separate from how search engines evaluate content. Google’s algorithms (which I’ve spent way too many hours analyzing) care about authority, relevance, user experience - not how many times something got retweeted.
The disconnect exists for several key reasons:
- Social platforms are essentially closed systems that search engines can’t fully access or evaluate
- The fleeting nature of social engagement rarely indicates lasting content value
- Viral content often lacks the substance and depth that drives SEO success
I’ve seen posts go viral and get thousands of shares while barely moving the needle on organic search. Meanwhile, deeply researched technical content with few shares consistently ranks well. The engines prioritize fundamentals - site speed, mobile optimization, strategic keyword usage, quality backlinks.
The real challenge lies in shifting from vanity metrics to meaningful KPIs. During quarterly planning sessions with clients, I now focus on:
- Creating content that solves specific user problems and search intents
- Implementing comprehensive keyword research mapped to the buyer journey
- Optimizing technical performance and site architecture
- Building relationships for legitimate backlink opportunities
- Regular analysis and refinement based on search console data
Social shares still matter for visibility and distribution. But treating them as an SEO signal is like using Instagram likes to measure email marketing success. Different channels, different purposes.
The path to sustained organic visibility requires focusing on search engine fundamentals rather than social validation. I’ve learned to appreciate shares for what they are - a useful amplification tool, but not a ranking factor.
This perspective shift lets us build strategies that serve both channels appropriately without conflating their success metrics. The goal is creating content valuable enough to rank well and worth sharing - not chasing shares in hopes of SEO gains.
Time to realign our efforts toward the technical and content elements that influence search visibility. Let’s stop pretending social shares are an SEO shortcut and invest in the foundational work that drives lasting organic growth.
By grounding our SEO approach in proven ranking factors rather than social metrics, we can build sustainable organic visibility while letting social serve its own valuable but distinct purpose. The future belongs to marketers who understand these channels’ separate but complementary roles in a comprehensive digital strategy.