Over the past few years, the topics I’ve researched, written, and spoken about have evolved. One of the most common questions I’m still asked about is the relationship between social media sharing and SEO performance. Thanks to Rand and his awesome team at SEOMoz, I got access to their Mozscape API and was able to actually start to answer these questions in a scientific way.

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 LIinkedIn), 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.