Social Media and the changing nature of SEO rankings

While the jury is still to be out on the role of social media in SEO rankings, its transformative impact on SEO rankings is undoubtedly proven. While the exact co relation is yet to be determined, let us understand in depth the various ways in which social media has changed SEO rankings.

Social signals have both a direct and indirect impact on SEO rankings. Direct impact comes from

• Facebook Likes and Shares
• Twitter Followers
• Tweets mentioning your brand name

Indirect impact comes from

• Higher time spent on site and more repeat visitors to your website
• Positive reviews due to happier customers
• Increased inbound links due to improved online visibility

Let us now examine how these have influenced and changed the way SEO works

Content that is widely shared in social media sites and garners positive reviews will rank higher. That means the focus now is on high quality content worth sharing as no one will share substandard content with friends. In terms of SEO rankings it means that the days of mindlessly churning content for sheer visibility is over, it is necessary to invest in research to produce content that adds value to the reader and is share worthy.

With high quality content being shared on social media, there is a high probability that someone may link back to it, creating a natural organic back link thereby enhancing SEO value. Earlier SEO strategies of buying and exchanging links are increasingly irrelevant. Google has always stressed more on quality rather than quantity of links. Infact the recent Penguin update actually penalizes sites with spammy link profiles. It now makes more sense to build strategies to enhance social sharing thereby building more natural links to improve search ranking

Content shared or retweeted by an authority in your space is given higher weightage by search engines resulting in higher search rankings. You need to have either established a meaningful relationship with the influencer or generated exceptional content to make this happen. SEO is now no longer restricted to keyword optimization and building links. A detailed social media strategy that includes commenting on others’ posts, sharing others’ posts, interacting with peers and influencers on social media must become an integral part of the SEO strategy.

Google’s own recent social media tools have changed the SEO paradigm significantly, listed below are the important game changers introduced by Google

• You are what you search. This is increasingly becoming true with Google’s Personalized search, where any search query turns up a personalized set of results based upon your prior Google search history data, even if you’re completely logged out of your Google account. For instance searching for the same set of terms like “nursery,” “sports, can pull up wildly different results for different users even they’re all signed out of Google. SEO loses relevance with personalized search factors influencing heavily upon which returns feature prominently in your results.
• Google has started to integrate Google Places results with “Natural” or “Organic” rankings- This means that in many regions and for many terms, websites that used to rank in the top three now find themselves pushed to the bottom of the page. On the other hand, Google Places listings can dominate the first page of results. It is important to remember that a large part of Google Places rankings is entirely dependent on reviews of your business- hence rewarding customers who rate you well is becoming an important part of engaging with the customer.
• Google Plus has become the new God of SEO. Because the Google+ button is obviously part of Google, it gets preferential treatment when it comes to SEO, dominating search results and social media platforms. Facebook and Twitter are still essential SEO players, but their influence will obviously decrease with the addition of the Google+ button.

The best approach in today’s world is to create content keeping in mind both SEO and social. It is important to research what is trending within your niche communities on the social networks and begin by creating content that answers the query. It is equally important to regularly analyze your competitor’s page to see what other sites are ranking prior to developing any of your own content. This will allow you to make more informed decisions on the type of content that is likely to bring in authority links as well as increase the sharability quotient of your content since a significant part of the search algorithm is centered on social media and engagement.