SEO has traditionally been associated almost exclusively with rankings in search engines, the traffic they generate and the leads/sales that, in turn, delivers. But increasingly, the title of ‘search engine optimisation,’ is encompassing far more than just Google and Bing rankings. One such area in which SEOs are now finding that it isn’t only a benefit to operate, but is essential, is social media. And here’s how social and search work together.
The Algorithm
Major search engines, Google and Bing (Bing is now delivering Yahoo’s organic results too) have confirmed that they use social measures as a part of their algorithm. How big a part remains debated. But experiments and tests carried out by the likes of SEOMoz and other major search engine blogs would suggest that social media drastically speeds up indexing time on new content and has a direct bearing on rankings as well. So it can’t be ignored. Given that social media is much more difficult to convincingly manipulate than, say, link profiles, it’s a certain fact that search engines will be looking for ways to integrate social factors further into their increasingly sophisticated algorithms.
It’s Only Going to Matter More
I can’t see how social media could become less prevalent in SEO. In fact, I only see its influence growing. Social media is harder to manipulate – in order to pull it off effectively, you really have to engage with users and your site has to be one that users want to share. Add to that the fact that the search engines ultimately want to deliver the highest quality and most relevant type of results of their users and it makes perfect sense that the more sophisticated the algorithms become, the more that social factors will matter.
Traffic Driving
Social media, done right, does have the potential to drive a large quantity of traffic.
Links
No, I’m not talking about the no-follow profile links on your Twitter and Facebook pages. In fact, the links on social media are generally all no-follow. However, the more people see your content, the more likely they are to link back to it or reference it in their own content. Social media has the power to get eyes onto your website and your content, thanks to sharing, liking, bookmarking and all manner of other user engagement activities.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Social is crucial to the success of search now and it’s only going to become more important as time goes on.
The post on Search and Social was a contribution from Stacey Cavanagh of UK Digital Marketing Agency, Tecmark
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