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“Official”: Facebook and Twitter DO Influence Natural Search Rankings

Author's avatar By Chris Soames 09 Dec, 2010
Essential Essential topic

Confirmation that social mentions are used by Google to rank sites

Value: [rating=5]

Our commentary: With Danny Sullivan's interview with Google & Bing earlier this month & the follow-up by SEOMOZ it would appear its now almost official that social media & SEO need to be well & truly integrated. The concept of quality content that is shared, tweeted etc is now a big part of Google & Bing search results.

The interview with Danny Sullivan also goes onto talk about the concept of authority users and how being successful in social media (whether thats followers, fans, sharing) will help you in natural search rankings.

Marketing implications: I think this is something a lot of marketers have believed for sometime now, it just seemed so obvious. But now we know for sure what does that mean for digital marketing teams & online businesses? I would be asking myself :

  • Does my 2011 marketing strategy include social media & / or natural search?
  • Does my 2011 SEO strategy include social media & the appropriate KPI's?
  • Are your search, social, copywriting, designers all aligned to the strategy and working together?
  • Do your weekly & monthly reports include relevant metrics for measuring your social impact as well as traditional web metrics?

We're seeing many SEO+PR+Social media+content management roles combined now in mid-sized companies to help this integration.

The implications of this "announcement", are in my opinion are game changing. They should affect how all business who "understand search & its value". This should & will change how you approach SEO, digital marketing, team / business structure, analytics, systems at strategic level.

Take your time to go through the articles & understand them ready to start making some changes (if you haven't already) to your team, strategy & marketing approach. Being active & amazing in your market place is becoming as (if not more) important as having amazing products with an optimised website & vast amounts of links.

Recommended link: What Social Signals Do Google & Bing Really Count?

Recommended link: Google + Bing Confirm that Twitter/Facebook Influence SEO

Author's avatar

By Chris Soames

Chris Soames is a Smart Insights blogger and consultant, he has worked in digital marketing for over 6 years with the last few years managing international web strategies for a leading travel brand. Now the Commercial Director at First 10, an Integrated marketing agency, he helps clients get clarity on their marketing strategy and create campaigns engineered to engage with their consumers to help drive sell-through. Most of all, Chris enjoys working with talented people who want to create great (& commercial) things not just tick boxes.

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