Social Stats Are Worthless

On my 10 Things I Learned About Local SEO in 2014 post on SearchEngineLand, I forgot to include #11: Social Sharing Stats Are Worthless.

I use to obsess about social share numbers on each of my SEL posts. It drove me slightly crazy to see that Greg Gifford’s and Chris Silver Smith’s posts would always get way more shares than mine. Not that their posts didn’t deserve the shares, but were mine so much less worthy of a RT? I know, I know, Ebola, Ferguson, Eric Garner, NYC Police Thing, ISIS, etc., but hey this blog is all about Local SEO and my ego, in no particular order.

Yesterday, Jessica Thompson poured some cold water on me and woke me up when she published the Top 10 Local Search Columns of 2014 and my post Why Did Google’s Pigeon Crap on Big Local Brands? (check the URL) took the top spot with the most page views, despite having significantly fewer social shares than any other post on the list.

So yes Greg and Chris, your social bots are kicking my ass but like I said, social stats are crap.

But it’s still nice to see a high RT # so with that in mind, here’s the cover of a 2014 Local SEO wrap-up presentation I gave recently (apologies to any women reading this):

I was afraid that one might offend some of the women in the audience (or perhaps depress them that Ms. West is one of the more famous representatives of their gender) so I came up with a more SEO-friendly alternative.

And I’m talking to you OneDirectionSucksBalls. We need you to get out there, and for once in your lives focus your indiscriminate rage in a useful direction. Seize your moment my lovely trolls. Turn on Tweetbot and fly my pretties, fly!

See you in 2015…