The New World of SEO and Social Media

Social media is here to stay and will continue to evolve in terms of the interaction between consumers and companies. In fact, Google has already disclosed that it looks at social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to help determine ranking positions. Matt Cutts went on to say in the video released at the end of 2010 that not only was Google incorporating social networking sites into their ranking algorithm, but that “Google was also figuring out how to take into account the credibility and authority of the author behind a Tweet or Facebook post.”

What this means for businesses and their SEO efforts is that they will need to ramp up their activity on social media sites to keep up with the changes Google is making in this respect. Further proof from Google lies in their move of social search results from the bottom of the search engine results pages (SERPs) page to the main body of organic search results, yet another signal that having an active social media campaign as a part of SEO efforts is more important than ever.

To this end, businesses need to be consistently producing quality content that social media users are going to want to share and republish. The more effective a company is at reaching out across its social networking assets, the greater the amount of exposure, links, authority status, and ultimately higher rankings on the SERPs.

This is not to say that social media should be the sole focus of a company’s SEO efforts, it’s that social media is taking up a bigger part of search algorithms and cannot be ignored. SEO campaigns still need to operate in diversified channels so that all marketing eggs aren’t placed in one basket. While it’s true that social media will play an increasingly larger role, the traditional aspects of SEO are still getting calculated within the search engines’ algorithms. As before, a diversified approach is still the best way to go in terms of full spectrum SEO.

The rise of social media sites doesn’t change the necessity of building meaningful relationships with consumers. It does make it more personal however. For more information on incorporating social media into your SEO efforts, visit: http://gervaisgroupllc.com/ or call (866) 530 7703.