Straight from Google: Your Social Media Effort Influences Your Search Ranking

Summary: Google and Bing confirm that links on Facebook and Twitter can influence your web page’s ranking in their regular search results. But there’s an important qualifier. The number of links is less important than the reputation of the person doing the linking. For the best chance to improve your ranking, you should focus on authoritative or popular figures on social media properties.

Details: In Social Media, Quality Over Quantity

Just before the holidays, Matt Cutts, a prominent Google engineer, posted a video (click on video to the right) confirming long-held suspicions among the search community that Google does indeed use data – called signals – from Facebook and Twitter in its search algorithm. The Google spokesman explained that signals from social media are used primarily in Google’s real-time search index (a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web). But he also suggested that the same data influences regular search results as well.

Search Engine Land editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan not only detailed Google’s actions here but got Bing officials to confirm that the number two search engine also uses social media signals in its ranking algorithm.

However, before you start adding thousands of Facebook fans and Twitter followers, Google’s Cutts cautioned that quality matters over quantity.

Both Google and Bing acknowledge that they compute and use author quality to help determine how much weight an individual link should carry. Google calls it “author authority” while Bing refers to it as “social authority.” In either case, both sites look at the reputation of the person doing the linking, which likely includes a mix of the number of his followers, the number of retweets, the links in his tweets, how reputable his followers are and so on.

How important has link sharing activities become on Facebook and Twitter to improve your search rank? In a separate video (click on video to the right) when asked his advice on advanced SEO, Cutts suggested three primary areas of focus:

• Optimize your site for speed
• Make sure have a quality CMS solution
• Make sure you use social media marketing because that drives traffic in addition to links

Looks like we all need to become bigger fans of Facebook and Twitter.

Background

Google’s exact formula for determining site rank is of course a closely guarded secret. Time and again Google’s upper management has declined even to list the factors it uses, much less how they might be measured and weighted. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has confirmed there are roughly 200 factors that go into the rankings, which Google engineers are constantly tweaking. Some of these factors are well-know, such as:

• PageRank, how authoritative a page is deemed to be, based on inbound links, among other things
• Anchor Text, the words used in a link to another page (which is why links should never be artwork)
• Page Title tags, the words that appear at the top of your browser or in the tab

For a more comprehensive list of the likely 200 or so factors, check out Google’s own search guide, SEOMoz Search Engine Ranking Factors, and Webmasterworld.com 200 SEO Variables.

Adding Social Media To Your Website or Microsite

Encouraging links from authoritative Facebook and Twitter personalities is a time-intensive task that requires dedication and perseverance, and delivers results only over time. To get started, the best place to start is with content marketing or custom publishing, which will cover next week.

In addition to content marketing, another important component of your efforts should be integrating your website with the social media world by, among other things, providing “Share” buttons and data streams from your activities – described below and exemplified at the very bottom of this article. You’ve undoubtedly seen them on many sites you’ve visited. It’s time to add them to your site.

Fortunately, all the prominent social media properties – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg – provide the code and step-by-step instructions for sharing data between their sites and yours. Here’s how:

Facebook

To incorporate the ubiquitous Facebook “Like” button on your site, go here: Facebook “Like” Button

The Like button enables users to share your page with their friends with one click.

You can use other Facebook Social Plugins to turn user interactions into more engaging experiences throughout your site. For example, you can use the Activity Feed Plugin to show users a stream of the recent likes and comments from their friends on your site, and you can use the Recommendations Plugin to show personalized page recommendations to your users based on the likes and comments across your entire site. Click here for details.

Twitter

Twitter provides simple widgets to let you display Twitter updates on your website. They have a range of options to show your most recent tweets, real-time search results and more. Click here for installation details.

LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg

LinkedIn, Stumble Upon and Digg all provide simple code to add buttons to your site that allow visitors to easily submit your content to their sites for their audiences to view.

Go here for LinkedIn.

Go here for StumbleUpon.

Go here for Digg.

For Microsite.com clients, you’re able to add all the social media features detailed above to your sites. Contact your account manager for details.

Summary for Improving Your Site Rank Using Social Media

• Google and Bing confirm they use links in Facebook and Twitter to help determine a web page’s rank in regular search results.
• Quality over quantity. Both sites look at the reputation of the person doing the linking, so seek links from authoritative figures.
• Integrate your own website with your social media world. Most sites feature step-by-step instructions for doing so.

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