What Is Social Proof?
Social proof is continuing to play a paramount role in determining how a web page ranks in the search engines website conversion. This article is going to define what is social proof and what you need to know to use it to your advantage.
Social proof means that the actions which other people have taken in the past can influence people in the present to believe that those actions represent correct behavior. The effect of this is that those people take the same actions themselves. Social proof is especially powerful on the internet where it influences people to do all kinds of things just because someone else has done it before them.
Most of the time, social proof reflects a real truth, other times it does not. Whether or not that action is in reality correct or not seems to be a moot point, however.
Some examples of social proof could be putting a ticker for either your total number of subscribers for your email list or your Twitter following. If you have a substantial number of Twitter followers, someone is far more likely to also follow you while you have that proof in place.
We're starting to see social proof being shown off everywhere. Virtually any popular blog or website which you go to has social network integration. Even the major social networks have available integration with the other major players.
Of course this proof isn't just aesthetic or important to impress potential followers, friends, etc. but it's also very important in terms of the search engines. Google for example has recently shaken up their algorithm which they use to rank web pages social proof. They do this quite often, but recently they dealt a large blow to content farms.
I believe that a major effect of this update was that Google took a much greater emphasis on proof. Whereas content farms were symbols of low quality, Google looked for the only true metric for measuring quality according to other people. This is again where social networks like Facebook come into play.
The more "Likes" a web page has, the more implied quality is in its content. Google knows that bad content won't get praised by its peers, so this is a reliable way from its eyes to decide what is of higher quality and deserves a more visible search engine ranking. Google is effectively putting its own users in charge of deciding what is good and what is bad and, consequently, how a web page should be ranked.
Social proof means that the actions which other people have taken in the past can influence people in the present to believe that those actions represent correct behavior. The effect of this is that those people take the same actions themselves. Social proof is especially powerful on the internet where it influences people to do all kinds of things just because someone else has done it before them.
Most of the time, social proof reflects a real truth, other times it does not. Whether or not that action is in reality correct or not seems to be a moot point, however.
Some examples of social proof could be putting a ticker for either your total number of subscribers for your email list or your Twitter following. If you have a substantial number of Twitter followers, someone is far more likely to also follow you while you have that proof in place.
We're starting to see social proof being shown off everywhere. Virtually any popular blog or website which you go to has social network integration. Even the major social networks have available integration with the other major players.
Of course this proof isn't just aesthetic or important to impress potential followers, friends, etc. but it's also very important in terms of the search engines. Google for example has recently shaken up their algorithm which they use to rank web pages social proof. They do this quite often, but recently they dealt a large blow to content farms.
I believe that a major effect of this update was that Google took a much greater emphasis on proof. Whereas content farms were symbols of low quality, Google looked for the only true metric for measuring quality according to other people. This is again where social networks like Facebook come into play.
The more "Likes" a web page has, the more implied quality is in its content. Google knows that bad content won't get praised by its peers, so this is a reliable way from its eyes to decide what is of higher quality and deserves a more visible search engine ranking. Google is effectively putting its own users in charge of deciding what is good and what is bad and, consequently, how a web page should be ranked.
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