Will social signals replace links as a primary SEO signal affecting Google’s rankings? Have social signals already replaced links in that way?
That topic came up last month during the keynote conversation with Google’s Matt Cutts at our SMX Advanced conference in Seattle. Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land’s Editor-In-Chief, asked a series of link-related questions that led the conversation through topics like no-followed links, affiliate links, paid links and more.
For a few years now, some SEO insiders have suggested that social signals are replacing links as a quality signal for Google’s ranking algorithm — and that refrain has become a bit more common, I’d say, in the wake of the Panda and Penguin updates.
But in the video below, Matt Cutts explains that it’s much too soon to say that links are dead.
Written by SearchEngineLand.com’s Matt McGee
