Search Engines are Increasingly Incorporating Social Signals in Their Algorithms—Are You Prepared?

Now that Google and Bing are incorporating social signals into their ranking factors, it’s more important than ever to make sure your business or brand has a strong social media presence. But, it’s not just enough to create Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts. You need to actively engage in these communities and establish yourself as trusted, relevant brand in order to improve your rankings. Below are a few of the social signals that the search engines are taking into account when it comes to ranking websites.

Obviously, the more followers you have, the better. A large number of followers will make your Twitter account more authoritative and will provide your URL with more value (don’t forget to link to it!). The quality of your followers are just as important, if not more so, than the quantity, so you need to make sure your followers are real human beings, not just spam bots. Ideally, you want your followers to be social media influencers with a large amount of followers themselves. The relevance of your followers is also taken into account, so you will want the majority of them to be within the same niche as you. Finally, you should create tweets that are actively retweeted, for this is another factor that comes into play with the search engines.

Similar to Twitter, with Facebook, having a lot of fans is key. Your goal with your corporate profile is to engage with your fans and continually provide fresh content that garners a lot of comments. Likes and comments are both counted as social signals, but comments show that people are really invested in your business. Anyone can passively like your page and then have no other interactions with you. Comments, however, show the search engines that people are really involved with your brand, thus demonstrating that you are relevant.

Since YouTube is now the second largest search engine after Google, it’s important to devote some time to this platform. It goes without saying that the more views you get on YouTube, the better. Make sure to link to your site in your profile description so all of the value is transferred to your main website. It’s also important to engage and comment on other users’ videos so more link juice is passed back to your profile. Don’t forget about keywords: use them in the title, tags and the transcript, if you have one. And, the more liked your videos are, the more value and authority you transmit to the search engines.

Social media is only going to continue to grow in popularity and is increasingly becoming involved in search engine results. So, if you haven’t yet, take a careful inventory of your social presence online and be diligent in ensuring that you have many more positive mentions than negative ones. If you don’t, it’s crucial that you engage in damage control now so you can show the search engines that you are an authoritative, relevant brand within your niche and rise to the top of the SERPs!