As search results become more personalized, it’s only natural that social media networks play a bigger role in these tailored search results. Learn how social search produces results that are specific to the individual and how your brand can stay relevant in these results as the social impact on search continues to grow.
2. Tomorrow’s SEO Today – Social Search and Beyond - Overview
Overview
• History of Social Signals
• Google Being Vocal about Social
• Setting Up Social Media Profiles
• Sharing content properly
• Social Signals’ SEO research, studies
• Social Signals’ Future
3. Social Search and Beyond – History of Social Signals and SEO
History of Social Signals and SEO
• Real-Time Search Launched December 2009
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-launches-latest-results-realtime-search/15290/
• Google goal: to strive to bring us “the freshest, most
comprehensive and relevant search results over an ever
expanding universe of content on the multitude of devices” we
“use to access it.”
• Google, Circa 2009
• July 2011, Twitter
Firehose ended.
4. Social Search and Beyond – Google Has Been Vocal on Social
Signals
Google Has Been Vocal on Social
Signals
Matt Cutts at SES San Fran 2012 Keynote:
“Google has a 10 year plan for relying on social factors as a part of
the algorithm… In the short term, Google is still relying on links as
an important ranking factor.”
Question: Are social signals a ranking factor?
“They have to have access to the data. Some sites are blocked,
Facebook, etc.. If they can’t crawl, then they won’t have the data.”
5. Social Search and Beyond – Google Has Been Vocal on Social
Signals
Google Has Been Vocal on Social
Signals
Matt Cutts at SES San Fran 2012 Keynote:
Regarding real time search:
“Twitter is like a private nightclub. Fundamentally they can
suspend anyone if they want. Anyone can compete with Google if
they can crawl better.
Google announced last week (in 2012) that they crawl 20 billion
pages a day. When the Twitter firehose deal ended, they were
blocked from crawling. When Twitter went away, Google was
leery about relying on that data.”
(Was this when they started to change their tune about signals?)
6. Social Search and Beyond – What Can You Do Now?
What Can You Do Now?
• Set up social profiles
• Contribute, update regularly
• Share content
• Add friends/followers
• Be active! Every single day...
7. Social Search and Beyond – Setting Up Social Profiles
Setting Up Facebook Profile
• Set up Business Page (Facebook.com/globerunnerseo)
• Google crawls biz pages, not personal accounts
• Promote Facebook post, even for $5
• Bing has FB personal account data
• Does anyone care about Bing rankings?
• Sorry, Duane Forrester!
8. Social Search and Beyond – Facebook Sponsored Post
Pubcon SFIMA 2014 Post April 22nd
• Wrote a post this week about Pubcon SFIMA.
• Posted on blog, promoted
• Search result with
Google Authorship snippet,
on page 1 for
“Pubcon SFIMA 2014”
within hours
• Facebook sponsored post
• Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn
9. Social Search and Beyond – Setting Up Social Profiles
Setting Up Twitter Account
• Don’t follow more than following you
• Post on your blog? Share the full URL, not a short URL.
• Tweet of URL helps get URL crawled quickly.
10. Social Search and Beyond – Setting Up Social Profiles
LinkedIn
• Full personal profile with good photo/avatar is good.
• Share your blog posts, articles, updates.
• “Like” contacts’ updates, they get emailed that you liked it.
11. Social Search and Beyond – Setting Up Social Profiles
Setting Up Google+
• Google+ Local biz (page), verify listing, used for Publishership
• Google+ Personal Account, used for Authorship
• Google Publishership: Important for home page, content pages
• Google Authorship:
Important for blogs, sites with multiple authors
• If employee leaves company, leave authorship in tact.
12. Social Search and Beyond – Dominate Your Personal Brand on
Google+
Optimize Your Profile on Google+
• Fill Out Entire Profile, Every Field
• Summary with Interesting Facts About Yourself
• Add relevant keywords
• Get local – add location
13. Social Search and Beyond – Dominate Your Personal Brand on
Google+
Optimize Your Profile on Google+
• Write Great Content, share Great Content
• Manage Your Contacts, Put in Circles
• Join Niche Specific Communities
• Pay Attention to Your Ripples
• Create a Visually-Rich Experience
• Use Google+ Hangouts
• Display Your Google Plus Badge on Your Site
14. Social Search and Beyond – Dominate Your Personal Brand on
Google+
Watch, Use Google Ripples
• Watch hot posts, network with influencers based on Ripples
15. Social Search and Beyond – Dominate Your Personal Brand on
Google+
Adding Followers on Google+
• Search for Circles “Keyword Circle” or “SEO Circle”.
• Find others who shared their circles
• Add those people all at once, move later to other circle
16. Social Search and Beyond – Social Promotion for SEO
Promoting Social Media on Your Site
• Include Social Icons in Key Places
• Show actual number of +1s, Tweets, etc.
• +1 buttons, Tweet, LinkedIn, Facebook Like Button
• WordPress? Social Media Counters Plugin
17. Social Search and Beyond – Promoting Blog Posts for SEO
Promoting Posts on Social Media
Sites
• Post on site, get ready to promote immediately
• Write alternate titles, headlines, summaries
• Each social share gets unique title, headline, summary
• Network with others to help promote:
- bloggers write alternative post, summary post, links to you
- promote both summary posts and main post
• Promoting posts need to happen quickly: within 2 hours
• Building momentum with social shares is key
18. Social Search and Beyond – The future of social and SEO?
So, What Now?
Matt Cutts says “Facebook and Twitter Pages Are Treated Like Any
Other Web Page On the Internet”.
http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-facebook-twitter-pages-are-treated-like-any-
other-web-page-on-the-internet-182370
Think of social pages, shares, and profiles as pages.
• Get links from those pages.
• How to get good links? Network socially with influencers.
• When you interact with influencers:
Their profile links to your profile, could pass PageRank.
19. Social Search and Beyond – Future Social Signals for SEO
Future Social Signals for SEO?
• Building up a following counts more
• Authority counts, build “Author Rank”
• History of sharing good content
• History of writing, authoring good content
• History of authoring content that gets shared.
20. Social Search and Beyond – So What Now?
We Know +1s, Tweets, Likes Don’t
Count
• Technically, we know they don’t count.
• Does it matter, really? No. Keep sharing!
Studies and research:
Does Facebook activity impact SEO?
http://www.stonetemple.com/does-facebook-activity-impact-seo/
Measuring Google Plus Impact on Search Rankings
http://www.stonetemple.com/measuring-google-plus-impact-on-search-rankings/
Google SEO: How Google Impacts Search Results
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2307518/Google-SEO-How-Google-Impacts-
Search-Results
21. Social Search and Beyond – Thank You
THANK YOU
Contact Me
Bill Hartzer
Senior SEO Strategist
Globe Runner SEO
Email: Bill@GlobeRunnerSEO.com
Mobile: (214) 236-4378
Office: (972) 538-0260 Ext. 7076
Direct: (469) 645-1231
Web: http://www.globerunner.com
Blog: http://www.billhartzer.com
Twitter: @bhartzer