Let’s take a look at the state of social media’s impact on SEO. You can read the full paper “How Social Activity Amplifies the Reach of Natural Search” here.
Google partnered with Twitter on real-time results in 2009, and since then the search giant has hinted that ‘social signals’ play a role in it’s complicated natural search algorithm. Defining those social signals and determining the weight they carry with search engines has been a matter of debate ever since.
This discussion reached a turning point on January 22, 2014 when Matt Cutts posted a video in which he stated ‘to the best of his knowledge, social media interactions do not directly affect rankings within Google’s search algorithm.’
Based on iProspect’s experience across hundreds of brands, the direct effect of likes, shares, retweets, pins, and other strictly social interactions on natural search results is currently not immediately quantifiable. We do believe there is a strong correlation between social sharing and high SEO rankings. Content and brands that rank highly also have huge fan bases and also share strong content via social networks.
We believe the emphasis will grow with time, especially as Google further identifies how to weigh authorship through Google+, and continues their efforts to find purer authority signals as seen in their Penguin updates.
The SEO value of your social media presence is strong enough to make adding SEO considerations into your social activities important. These considerations can pay dividends for your primary web presence, and improve the visibility – and value – of your social activities.
This paper is meant to educate digital marketers regarding what major social networks do and don’t do for SEO. We invite you to read further about the state of social media in regards to its impact on SEO today.
