Links shared through Facebook and Twitter can boost rankings. Pretty straight-forward, right? While it’s long been suspected that this is the case, measuring the real significance of social media’s effect on search has been less clear. Now there is official confirmation by two leading search engine providers: Google and Bing that this is the case. Both are placing a high priority on social media to develop their overall search rank and improve their indexing.
With both Google and Bing transitioning their strategies to develop and encourage more “real-time search” results, the ability to use social media effectively is fast becoming a necessity to any business aspiring for top SERP results. Using social media to deliver up-to-the-minute news and information links is becoming increasingly more relevant to search engine rankings and therefore more relevant to this SEO company based in France.
This revelation of the increasing importance of social media links by Google and Bing conveys the growing attitude by search engine providers. An article in SearchEngingeLand, discusses the effects of what this will mean for competing companies, with the need for the next level of creativity and utility necessary to be able to survive becoming ever more apparent. Social media’s rapid growth towards becoming more credible to search engines’ rankings proves that Google and Bing are taking Facebook friends and Twitter tweets seriously.
Also relevant about the increasing importance of social media, is that both Google and Bing place a premium on author authority. Bing says that search rankings are increasingly placing more importance “on tweets from authoritative people when best match relevancy is used”. Both search engines try to calculate the social authority of someone who tweets. For known public figures this is based on who they are. Google weighs the significance of a link tweeted as a signal for rankings, based on who sends them, especially in “Top Links”. Each search engine provider is adjusting their ranking system to meet the increasing demand and influence of all things social media.
Whilst the exact calculation for both search engine providers’ valuation of criteria remains unknown, we can assume that there are certain features that will increase rank. SEOmoz writes about different signals that could be used by Bing and Google for valuing criteria. Quantitating and qualitatively valuing social sharing can be divided into diversity of sources, timing, the surrounding content and the engagement level. All of these factors give authenticity to the speaker behind the social media interface. As the social media industry matures, better ways of evaluating author authority will develop as well.
Social media is no longer just for the tech blogger or casual social butterfly. It has become part of the online mainstream seen by this SEO company based in France . The value of content is such that it must be taken seriously by businesses wishing to survive online.