SEO Is Changing So You Better Get Social

charlotte-critchley

Search Engine Optimising is changing especially with the recent Panda algorithm released by Google in April 2012. As many of you know the Panda algorithm focuses on giving tighter guidelines in order to reduce the amount of unnatural links and so avoid spammy search results. The name of the game is to create natural links and to generate content that people will actually want to share. Therefore it is obvious that more focus is being put on social media and what real people are sharing on these platforms. Think of it like this; Google is looking for the most relevant content, if many people are naturally sharing information and talking about something Google will assume this is important and so rank it as more relevant. Google is collecting data from social media by looking at what is being tweeted on Twitter, liked on Facebook, commented on in blogs and most importantly what is being ‘plussed’ on Google +.

Google is taking notice of what is being shared and giving it more focus, so it is now more important than ever to get your content on social media. I am not saying that backlinks are not important because that’s not true it is just that social interactions will boost all your hard SEO work and make your site more relevant.

Personalised search is also having an impact on SEO practices. Depending on each user search results will vary in regards to location, interests and even friends interests. As mentioned above Google + has the most influence, which is no surprise as it is Google after all. Similarly Bing is placing more influence on Facebook.

Now you know the great effect social media is having on your SEO practices you need to allow your content to be shared. The first and most important thing is to generate high quality and genuinely interesting content. The second is to add sharing buttons for Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon, Pinterest etc to make it easier for the readers to share. Perhaps an idea would be to add widgets and embeds although things seem to be cracking down in this are too so do so carefully.

Remember, having your content shared socially will not have an immediate effect on your rankings. Although Google is taking advice from social signals which will keep you in Google’s good books and keep you ranking highly.

This post was written by Charlotte Critchley on behalf of Sentiment Metrics, specialists in social media tools.

Check our our Social Media Management services at Steady SEO.