Why is Social Media Important for your overall Google SEO Strategy?

Have your search engine rankings taken a beating of late? Have you noticed a decrease or increase in your rank based on keywords, domain and target audience? You probably didn’t realise that Google has updated its search algorithm with 50 major changes – Google Panda 3.4.

With this latest update, Google is forcing marketers to rethink and refine their SEO strategies. Google Panda 3.4 now penalises over-optimised website and has de indexed Build My Rank.  This is part of Google’s on-going strategy to combat “black hat” link building strategies and poor quality of websites. Some of the major changes are: –

• Significant reduction in anchor-link text match. This change has been made to combat sites stuffing keywords as part of their keyword strategy. The accepted exact-match keyword is now only around 5-10% while previously it was 40%.  This means businesses and website owners need to look into genuine link building and including a diverse range of keywords into the content.

• Elimination of Link Evaluation Signal
• The biggest change to date and in line with Google’s Search plus your world, is the importance of social media sites. Greater emphasis has been placed by Google on social media presence and social media links.  This now plays a greater role in website ranking.  You cannot now gain high ranking through isolated websites alone. The more popular you are on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ , YouTube, Pinterest, the higher the chance you have of topping search engine rankings.

Furthermore, Google Analytics has also made some significant adjustments to include Social Analytics. The company has defined the impact of social initiatives using four elements.

• Sources – indicates how visitors from multiple social platforms engage with your site.
• Conversions – measures the conversation rates and monetary value of shared content URLs, helping you determine the impact social media is having on your business.

• Pages – Monitors how pages are being shared, where they are shared, how the audience engages with them.

• Social Plugins – This shows the how your content is being shared via social buttons (like, +1, tweet, send) from your site directly.

The new social reports included under analytics also helps you to gain an overview of the ROI generated through your social media channels.

It also allows you in-depth insight with reports in: –

1. Page Engagement for each URL. You can identify which of your contents are most viral.
2. The conversions report allows you to quantify the value of your social media activities with Assisted Conversions and Assisted Conversion Value, Last Interaction Conversions and Last Interaction Conversion Value and Assisted/Last Interaction Conversions.
3. Social Plugins report contains the information that is most commonly shared directly from your website through the social media buttons.
4. Social Visitors flow details the path the visitor took from your social network to your website and from which social network generated most amount of visitors. This is especially helpful when you have promotions running in social media sites.

Additionally, Google has also initiated a social data hub partner network which allows you to see the offsite sharing of your URL from those partner networks and the activity stream.

While Google has officially mentioned that the Google Panda 3.4 update will only affect 1.6% of current queries, but this is an indication that Google is integrating the effective use of social media into it search algorithm. Furthermore, the upgrades to Google Analytics is also a positive indication that social media is now being considering as a serious channel for search engine optimisation and generating referral traffic. This update indicates a merging of organic and referral traffic for SEO. As a marketer, if your company is not already on social media then it’s high time you got on it; the days of traditional SEO are already over!

About Logan Nathan

Social Media Business Consultant | Internet (Web) Marketing Strategist Speaker | Trainer

Based in Sydney, Australia, Logan has been an avid & passionate social media user since the advent of Facebook. Logan runs his own workshops on the social media for business in Australia. He has also written a number of eBooks on the same subjects (Social Media Secrets for your Business, Twitter Secrets for Your Business and Social Media Startup Guide for Business), all of which are now published and available online. Logan is also a passionate speaker on the subject of using ‘Internet and Social Media for Business’ and spoken at number of Business conferences in Australia and overseas. As the Social Media Business Consultant, Logan is focused on guiding organisations through the four stages of social media for business – Education, Strategy, Implementation and On-going Management. If your business needs expert assistance on creating a custom Social Media and Search Engine Optimisation Strategy , contact us via logan@logannathan.com

Social Networking with Logan :

1. Feel free to download Logan’s eBook ebook on Social Media Secrets for Business valued at US$25.00 for FREE form his Facebook page http://facebook.com/socialmediamarketingaustralia
2. Do you want our weekly newsletter delivered every monday with latest Social Media News and trends? Then feel free to subscribe to our newsletter.
3. Want to discuss how we can do your social networking strategy? Then review our details here or send us an email via support@ictip.com.au