Ever
since the online world was stormed by social networks of all sorts, right from
the ubiquitous Facebook to Twitter to little less known likes of Pinterest,
their role in affecting Google rankings has been questioned, examined, and
discussed by experts and enthusiasts alike. Should social media be a primary
part of your SEO strategy? If yes, what
are the various social signals that affect the SERP?
The talks about
influence of social media on search engine rankings go as long ago as 2010,
when the leading search engine specialist and editor-in-chief of Search Engine
Land, Danny Sullivan suggested in his insightful article that Google and Bing
have added many social search features over the past year. Back then, there were only two social media
networks that everyone cared about, and that were Facebook and Twitter.
Fast forward to the
current era, and you will be surprised to know what Google thinks about the
social signals, particularly about Facebook and Twitter’s role in increasing
search engine rankings. When Google’s spam engineer Matt Cutts was asked in his
webmaster video help whether Facebook and Twitter signals are a part of the
algorithm, here is what he replied:
Facebook
and Twitter pages are treated like any other pages in our web index so if
something occurs on Twitter or occurs on Facebook and we're able to crawl it,
then we can return that in our search results. But as far as doing special
specific work to sort of say “you have this many followers on Twitter or this
many likes on Facebook”, to the best of my knowledge we don't currently have
any signals like that in our web search ranking algorithms.
So, Google’s stance is
pretty much clear with this reply, and that refers to not considering social
signals from Facebook and Twitter while doling out query results.
So why is everyone
including social media in their SEO strategy?
According to a
Searchmetrics study it was found that the impact on rankings come from
● Number
of Facebook shares
● Number
of likes on Facebook page
● Number
of followers on Twitter
● Number
of people have you in their G+ circle
● Number
of tweets mentioning your brand name or including a link to your website
In
addition to these measurable and tangible social media metrics, there are other
factors that have an indirect impact on the search rankings such as increased
citations, improved brand awareness and new brand reviews on various review
sites such as Google Local, Yelp and others. Besides, customers that have
become familiar with your brand through social media are more likely to become
repeat visitors, have a greater chance of staying on the page and better
engagement in the form of comments and UGC (User Generated Content).
Google+:
A social experiment that has SEO benefits
When
Google started Google+ many thought of it as a competitor social network to
Facebook. However, little one had a clue that Google had different plans. An
inseparable part of the Google platform, G+ actually serves a greater purpose.
This post at Moz, describes in very clear terms how Google+
is passing SEO benefits to websites. Thus a social networking
platform now has become one of the most important medium for improving the SEO
of your brand. With Hummingbird, one thing that has become clearer is Google’s
better preparedness for processing social signals.
The
future of social signals for SEO
Even if Google is not
extensively using social signals now, they certainly intend to use them in the
future. Here are some reasons for the
same:
Social media is fast
becoming the de-facto medium for consumers to connect and interact with their
favorite brands. Present day millennial are tomorrow’s influencers and all of
them have a presence on at least one of the major social networks. People
already spend more time of social networks than search engines and there is no
way Google can ignore this consumer behavior while deciding a brand’s
trustworthiness and reliability, because in the end, Google’s main mission is
to deliver the best results to users.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About Author:
About Author:
Saurabh Tyagi is a new
media enthusiast, blogger and avid follower of latest social media trends. His
articles help candidates looking for SEO jobs in the industry as they
provide a detailed insight into the most recent and relevant trends in search
engine marketing.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete