Archive for December, 2011
How Social Media Influences SEO
Social media is the number one activity on the internet, with over 2 billion users worldwide the influence of social media cannot be ignored, the search engines have realised this too. Search engine optimisation (SEO) is based on using links to decipher which content is relevant and high-quality, in social media there are more links being shared than anywhere else on the internet, it is the most reliable method for search engines to evaluate content popularity and quality.
The first way in which social media impacts on SEO is personalised search. There are many people that are not aware of personalised SEO search results, two different people can see two different search results, despite typing in the same keyword. The results are based on the shared links of your connections, which act as recommendations. If the user is signed into a Google account whilst searching they will see relevant results that their connections have +1’d or tweeted. Similarly, if a user is signed into Facebook and searches on Bing, then they will see relevant search results that their friends have ‘liked’. A search for ‘football’ is more likely to include information about Manchester United and Manchester City for those living in Manchester, whereas the same search in London may display results for Arsenal or Chelsea. This is because search engines understand that users trust members of their social circles. In the offline world, people take recommendations from their friends or family, search engines have incorporated this methodology into their search algorithms.
The second way in which social media can affect search results is through social signals. Similar to personalised search, social signals is the analysis of which content and links are being shared through the social web, any content being shared frequently or by highly influential people must therefore be high-quality content and may subsequently be ranked higher in the search results. Previously search engines had to base their rankings on how many links were shared on static websites, whereas social media is faster and more accurate in determining high-quality content. Although, it is important to note that currently a social signal is just one of many factors determining the ranking of a website, but its influence will significantly increase over the coming years.
The increasing use of social media data in search engine rankings doesn’t mean that it is the only element to focus on, it is still vital to invest SEO development for a website, building links on static webpages and improving the on-page optimisation. If you have been resisting social media until you read this post, it’s probably time to rethink your strategy.
