Does buying thousands of Facebook Fans/Likes affect SEO?

[CHEATERS]

To begin with, please pardon me if this question is ignorant. I'm completely new to this whole social media thing, and somewhat feel it is overhyped. I find it really difficult to believe that social media will actually help the majority of small business owners out there like me, and that most of them are probably being misled about the powers of social media to increase sales.

Because it's mentioned so frequently, I've decided to delve into it a bit more to see how this could possibly help me business.

Over the past few weeks, I've become familiar with a company that sells Facebook Likes, Twitter followers, as well as YouTube and SoundCloud plays. Since my official Twitter and FaceBook accounts really didn't have that many followers, I decided to buy a few thousand followers for each account.

Initially, I bought them because I wondered what would happen if a customer that visited my online store happened to go to those Twitter and Facebook pages. If I personally see a Facebook page with few followers, I probably wouldn't give them my business. I would want to go with a company that seems to generate a bunch of traffic to their pages.

Originally, I only had about 200 Facebook followers (now called Likes, it seems) and maybe 25 Twitter followers. I now have over 12,000 Twitter followers and 2,000 Facebook Likes. I may end up buying more since the service was pretty quick and affordable.

I'd like to know if Google factors Likes and followers into it's formula for creating SERPS. Will my website rank higher if I have 10,000 likes, rather than only 200? If so, would it be a notable increase?

FWIW, I found that more people organically started following my Facebook and Twitter accounts once I had more followers. I didn't change anything about how I maintained the page; I just had more people following them.

One other thing of note: these companies are almost certainly using fake/hacked accounts to like various pages around Facebook/Twitter. You can tell because my Facebook page says some city in Croatia has the most amount of 'likes' of my page. Do you think this might come into play at all?

Thanks for any and all help!

[Francisco_Meza]

As far as I know it does NOT affect SEO. It does increase the likelyhood of someone linking to you though. "IF" you want to know if this is worth it, look at your Google Analytics and see if people are converting on your website. Measure your FB and Twitter visits and assign a value to it.

My point here is not to focus on "will Likes and Tweets increase rankings".  My point is "Do those Likes and Tweets turn into conversions".

Here is a secret of mine. Social Media does land me business, but not as much as Google Adwords. Adwords KILLS social media in my clients' industries. My clients only care about more money in the bank, not about FB Likes and Tweets.

LEARN how to use GA.

[Boodreaux]

Not sure about the SEO...I guess if others are sharing your content maybe it would help. On the other hand if I went to a site and it had 12,000 likes my first reaction would probably be "spammy".  My second reaction would be I wonder how much he paid for those likes.  If others can see all your fans in Croatia with a different language theymight think the same thing.  I guess it depends on your service area and market.

If fake accounts are being used I am sure eventually the gig will eventually be up!

Boo