Why Social Media Is Becoming a Much Bigger Ranking Factor For Google

Social media is something that nearly every person has heard of or is a part of in one way or another with social sites such as Facebook and Twitter becoming incredibly popular over recent years. From the evidence we have seen this trend is only going to increase in the coming months and years.

Up until quite recently we have not really been able to tell how the big search engines such as Google views any businesses with good followings on websites such as Facebook and Twitter and whether it has any impact on how are ranking websites. Google did announce a few months back that they were now officially including Facebook ‘likes’ into their Algorithm as one of the many ranking signals they use to determine how to rank websites in their organic listings.

This is incredibly important because firstly Google is not renowned for volunteering information on any part of their Algorithm and so for web marketers all over the world, this really was a very interesting bit of information. Furthermore what we have also seen in recent months is that Google is moving away from content farms and article directories more with their recent ‘farmer update’ which is why a lot of websites have recently seen a drop in their long-tail keywords as article websites we a good place to use to help optimise for these less competitive key terms.

The excellent thing about social media is that it is an excellent way for companies to keep in touch with their customers and essentially convey promotions, new products and offers to them. So from a business’s perspective the fact is that social media platforms are a very valuable channel to communicate with customers and now they are a ranking factor for big search engines such as Google, there really is no excuse to not be focusing on developing your social media presence.

Another very interesting fact of 2010 is that the most visited site was not Google as it had been for many years but was now Facebook. This fact alone shows that Facebook is a factor that Google cannot ignore and as Facebook gears their social media site more towards businesses in the coming months then it can only mean Google will have to  make social media a bigger ranking factor.

So it seems that we are still at the very early stages of social media being a ranking factor for Google, however from what we are seeing this will surely grow in the coming months and so it is vital for any serious seo companies and internet marketers to start thinking about developing a successful social media strategy for their clients.

Bio:

Jon works for J21Media an affordable seo company based in the UK and is currently working alongside a jewellery box company called Queens Leather.