How Facebook Affects Google Ranking
Whether we like it or not, social media is here to stay. And facebook, one of the leading social networks, is now impacting the face of SEO. A number of search engines including Google and Bing are integrating data from social media into the results they provide to searchers.
What are Social Signals?
Social signals are any number of actions on the part of social media users, including Facebook Shares, Comments and Likes; tweets on Twitter and +1’s via Google+. When a link to any content on your site is featured on a social media post, the feedback from those who view the link and its content may be recorded and use as a ranking factor.
Why Do Search Engines Care About Social Signals?
It is the job of search engines to ensure that their results are useful and relevant. The advent of social signals and their incorporation into search result factors has helped the search engines ensure that they are delivering relevant content to their users. Since over 30 billion items have been shared on Facebook monthly (over 5 billion on tweets), it is no wonder the search engines have honed in on the social media phenomenon.
What Does This Mean for SEO?
The bottom line here is that if you or your internet marketing firm is not making use of social media as a supplement to your existing SEO efforts, you are missing out on a huge opportunity. Make sure your company has a presence on important social media outlets and that they are active with genuinely useful content. And, obviously, regularly link to pages on your website and encourage sharing and other types of feedback in the form of social signals.
