LinkedIn Social Link Sharing Is Best Way To Boost SEO, Study Finds

Bloggers, journalists, and other online writers love to share their content on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest, but, for best results, links should really appear on LinkedIn.

HubSpot social media expert Dan Zarrella recently conducted a study of link and SERP correlation and discovered that links shared via LinkedIn tend to do better in terms of overall search engine placement.

In a blog post, Zarrella wrote:

“To complete this analysis, I compiled a database of more than 25,000 URLs that had been shared at least once on the three major social networks (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn), were at least a month old, and had at least one incoming link. First, I looked at the relationship between the number of times a URL was Tweeted and the number of incoming links it had pointing to it. I found a convincing positive relationship. Those URLs that got more Twitter love, also got more link love.”

While Facebook and Twitter received a good amount of attention, Zarrella pointed out:

“While all three networks did have a positive correlation, the strength of the relationship was strongest for LinkedIn.”

The principle behind the study is rooted in sound SEO practices; by receiving more shares, your content is seen by more people, shared by more websites, and ultimately provides more links to your content. The more links an article has, the higher authority rank it is given and hence the higher search engine placement.

The study found that, while Facebook and Twitter share the most links to content, the number of links directed at that content is higher per share via LinkedIn.

HubSpot Founder Dharmesh Shah and SEOmoz CEO Rand Fishkin show a graph of the results: