Influence Your Search Position Using Social Media Sites

There are hundreds of factors that the search engines consider when creating their results pages. Web content and links have always been considered important. More recently, the use of social indicators has been highlighted by the likes of Google as a way to identify Author Authority or Author Rank. A lot of attention from social media websites means that an author is obviously well respected within their online community. Therefore, having an active and effective social media profile can help improve your search rankings as well as your social media performance.

Google’s Impact On Social Media

Google has long dreamed of being able to combine its powerful search engine listings with a variety of social results. This universal search is certainly several steps closer than ever before but it remains something of a distant dream. There are, of course, many social indicators that the search engines will use but it makes sense that Google would use data from their own social network, Google+. They have greater control over the information they can access and how they use it. Many believe Google+ already impacts on their SEO and its importance in this respect is only likely to be highlighted more in the future.

Google+

Google+ is the search engine’s first major entry into the social networking arena. They have had previous attempts but on a smaller scale and they are promising and delivering greater interaction between the social network and their search results.

Other Social Media Websites

There are many other social media websites to consider. YouTube is one of the most popular sites in the world and, if you consider it to be a search engine, then it would be the second biggest behind owners Google. It is a social media sharing website and enables those with video content to enjoy another outlet or channel for their creative work.

Examples Of Social Sites

• Flickr and Picasa enable the sharing of photos while Scribd offers presentation sharing. As well as YouTube, users looking for video sharing sites can use Vimeo and DailyMotion.
• Digg, StumbleUpon, and NewsVine are what are considered to be social news sites. They allow users to write or syndicate news content and share it with readers.
• Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn are among the most popular social networks one can access. These often cross the boundaries into other forms of social media websites. Facebook, for example, is also one of the most popular video sharing sites too. • Twitter, while also considered a social network, is a microblogging platform. Tumblr and Plurk are also tagged as being microblogging platforms.
• Location based social networks like FourSquare and Google Latitude enable users to share their location and even rate or rank the specific establishment they are in. This is a very small sample of the types of social media website that exist. There are some that are highly targeted to small groups of people and offer one very specific service. Mendeley, for example, is a researchers’ social network. Causes, which is actually a Facebook application, is the world’s largest fundraising social media application.

How Social Media Impacts Search

Social media is certainly known to help search rankings. Shares, Likes, and links from such pages are considered social indicators by the search engines and they consider websites with a lot of social indicators to have authority and respect from readers. Some users have already reported that Google+ and Google+1 results can help and has helped increase the ranking of their website.

How To Use Social Media To Your Benefit

Consider your strengths, the type of content you serve, and your target visitors and website users. If you serve video content then you should look to share video. If you want to encourage conversation about the video clips and videos that you share then you should consider Facebook as well as YouTube because this combines the features of a social network and a video sharing website. If you serve news content then NewsVine or another collaborative news website could be your best option.

Social Success

The likes of Dominos Pizza, Dell, and Starbucks are some of the big name companies that have succeeded in the social media arena. Companies are now looking at ways in which to incorporate mobile into their social media. More and more users are accessing social networks like Facebook from their mobile phone and there are many more ways in which users can interact with these sites on mobile platforms. Mobile social media marketing has become increasingly important to those looking to benefit from social traffic.

Setting Your Site Up To Benefit

A full social media marketing campaign can cost a lot of time and effort and for the small business it may not seem like a financially beneficial option. However, the rewards can be exceptional as long as your campaign takes the right form and heads in the right direction. Your website should also be set up so that it benefits your social media campaign. Whether this means offering an online app, giving users easy access to share buttons, or delivering on the promise that you make to social media users, you should ensure that your site is set up and ready to deliver conversion for your efforts. Social media is a powerful means of encouraging user engagement and it can deliver exceptional results for your website in exchange for some time or resources. Have you optimised your site for social media? Do you share content and, if so, has it helped improve your online business results? Let us know below.

 About Guest Blogger

Matt Jackson is a content writer for SEOOutsourcingCompany.co.uk, writing social media and on- page content for a variety of sites in many industries. They work with digital marketing agencies of all sizes, providing ethical and efficient SEO Outsourcing.