Leveraging Social Media for SEO

Using Your Social Network for Higher Search Rankings
Rand Fishkin, CEO + Co-founder, SEOmoz
July 2011; Sao Paulo, Brazil

Direct Impacts of Social Networks on Search Rankings

Direct Links from Social Profiles
Not all profile links are followed, but correlation data suggests even the nofollows may add value.
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
Via http://answers.onstartups.com, which uses the StackExchange platform.

Tweets Influencing Crawling + Rank
Tweets from powerful accounts that earn lots of RTs seem to act like links and help even in the long term
Check out these two: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-tweet-effect-how-twitter-affects-rankings-12781and http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tweets-effect-rankings-unexpected-case-study

Social / UG Content Targeting Long Tail Queries
A great example of this is Facebook comments, which you can make indexable using: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/make-facebook-comments-box-indexable-by-search-engines

Second-Order Effects of
Social Media

Links Created Due to Social Visibility
I’ve contributed on http://quora.com moderately over the past year and in addition to the direct traffic, Moz now also earns nice links from folks who find us through those threads.

Branding Impact
If you want everyone in the startup/hacker world to know your company, just get 5-6 pieces to the frontpage of Hacker News.
Sites like http://news.ycombinator.com exist in virtually every tech-forward industry, and when they don’t; there’s a big opportunity for you to create/host them.

Positive User/Usage Data Signals
Time on Site
# of Unique Visits
Popularity Over Time
Browse Rate
CTR from SERPs
Social traffic may have high bounce rate, but it shows engagement and builds familiarity, leading to greater trustworthiness and all the accompanying metrics Google now uses w/ Panda.

Influencing Personalized SERPs & Adding Social Proof

+1s in the SERPs
Hello Social Proof!
These +1 counts only seem to show when a page has 500 or more +1s. More - http://searchengineland.com/confirmed-google-showing-1-counts-to-logged-out-users-82800

“My Social Circle” Results
Results from Google’s “My Social Circle.” To see results like this, just add “&tbs=frim:1” to the end of any Google query.

Social Annotations from Your Network
As great as http://www.everywhereist.com is, it doesn’t rank page one for this query unless I’m logged in and following Geraldine on Twitter.

The social connections appear to influence rank ordering.
These annotations undoubtedly increase CTR, particularly if the source is trusted.

Hang on a tic... How did they know I’m connected to Kalena on Facebook?! I haven’t yet added Facebook to my Google account!
When Google starts using latent (rather than active) network connections, social becomes even more powerful.

Google crawls deeply to get social data and connections once you add a profile.
Read more here http://www.seomoz.org/blog/social-annotations-in-search-now-your-social-network-rankings and see your socially connected data via http://www.google.com/s2/search/social?hl=en#socialcontent

Google Has Deep Social Network Spidering
Notice that Google crawls through one network to discover connections 2-3 “hops” away on another.
Read more here http://www.seomoz.org/blog/social-annotations-in-search-now-your-social-network-rankings and see your socially connected data via http://www.google.com/s2/search/social?hl=en#socialcontent

Google+
A New Front in the Search & Social Mix

9,737 followers on Google+. 1,708 followers on Facebook.
You can see more about the Google+ product via their demo here - http://www.google.com/intl/en/+/demo/

Google+ Still Has a Lot to Learn About Social
Facebook URL
Facebook.com/Rand.Fishkin
Twitter URL
Twitter.com/randfish
Google+ URL
plus.google.com/u/1/111294201325870406922
Google themselves recommend usable, descriptive URLs, but fails on +

Sharing on Google+ is a Bit Different
Via http://crosscutcommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Extendedcircles-2-1024x625.jpg

Mentions are Useful, but a Bit Hidden
Go to “Notifications” then use the menu to select “Mentions”
This, sadly, means that, at least for now, mentioning someone on Plus won’t get their attention the way it can on Twitter

FindPeopleonPlus is a Great Tool
Via http://www.findpeopleonplus.com/

7 Powerful Tactics to Improve Your Network’s Reach

#1: Build a Social Sharing Email List
Connecting with like-minded, socially-networked friends to share and co-share content makes good sense, and can be totally white hat. You’ll learn a lot, too!

#2: Find Influencers w/ FollowerWonk
Finding influencers via http://www.followerwonk.com is awesomely easy.

#2.1: Find Influencers w/ GG Profiles
Google Profile search also rocks: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/dont-ask-sites-for-links-find-people-and-connect. Just use &tbs=prfl:e to the end of any Google query to see them.

#2.2: Find Influencers w/ LinkedIn
To make the most of this, you’ll want to use LinkedIn’s Advanced Search function: http://www.linkedin.com/search

#3: Solicit Contributions to Build Content
Rae’s interview featured expert-sourced questions AND answers, meaning she had only to curate: http://www.sugarrae.com/link-development/link-building-interview/

#4: Optimize What You Share through Analysis
Check out http://www.seomoz.org/blog/calculating-and-improving-your-twitter-clickthroughrate for more on analyzing/improving your social sharing

#4.1: Optimize Time + Frequency of Sharing, Too
http://whentotweet.com can help with this part  Heard good things about http://time.ly too

#5: Subscribe to Aggregators; Craft Great Headlines and Share
Sites like http://popurls.com, http://alltop.com, http://summify.com, http://reddit.com and other aggregators can help you ID the types of content, headlines and sources that work well.

#6: Optimize Your Profiles, Pics + Bios
I’ve tested/optimized my profile picture (background color matters!), my bio (a bunch of times – accuracy and hint of what’s to come helps) and my URL (randfishkin.com probably does better)

#7: Treat Your On-Site Shares as CRO
Via one of the web’s most brilliant data porn blogs: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/

Overwhelmed by sharing!!
Every post on http://mashable.com has 23 unique links to share across 7 channels

SEARCH
Isn’t Just “SEO” Anymore

SOCIAL
Influences Further than You Think

Combine + Conquer or Risk Losing to Those Who Do
News/Media/PR
SEO
Email
Research/White Papers
Blogs + Blogging
Infographics
Comment Marketing
Social Networks
Online Video
INBOUND MARKETING!(Find Your Audience Organically on the Web)
Webinars
Forums
Document Sharing
Social Bookmarking
Word of Mouth
Podcasting
Direct/Referring Links
Type-In Traffic
Q+A Sites

Q+A
Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder, SEOmoz
Twitter: @randfish
Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog
Email: rand@seomoz.org
You can now try SEOmoz PRO Free!
http://www.seomoz.org/freetrial

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Leveraging Social Media for SEO

by Rand Fishkin

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