Social media and search engines are so intertwined that soon it will be difficult to succeed in SEO without paying proper attention to social media signals. In fact, social media signals are so important that we witness a birth of a new kind of SEO services – Social SEO. A report from agency GroupM and comScore shows that if social media and search are used together, they can increase a CTR by 94%. Search is great for research and initial buying decision while social media is invaluable for decision validation.
Social media engagement plays a crucial role in customer satisfaction, brand awareness, buzz, etc. It can result in an increased number of highly qualified customers – customers who found you through word of mouth. It can also significantly increase a lifetime customer value (ie: customer relationship is not finished after the initial sale is made, it can and should be nurtured further). It is an excellent source of additional income streams.
Social authority, which is otherwise called a social rank, plays increasingly important role not only in a social search, it affects the SERPS ranking in regular organic search too. I have references from both Google and Bing to prove it. Before talking about human authority as a new SEO signal, let’s take a look at some other factors that demonstrate the importance of social media influence in SEO game.
Acquisition of High PR Links through Social Networks
It’s a well-known fact that pages on many popular social networks and social bookmarking sites can have high page rank. My twitter page, for example, has page rank 6. I don’t have a full benefit from this pr since Twitter uses nofollow attribute for the links coming from profile pages. Yet there are other social networks varying in pr from 2 to 9 that don’t use a nofollow attribute, so you can have an impressive link juice coming your way.
There are thousands of social networks you can “ride” to gain serious SEO advantage. If some “SEO experts” think social media is still a waste of time… Well, let’s just hope that your competitors hire such “experts” to help them rank for your prime keywords. 
Two Types of Organic Search
Until recently there was only one type of organic search – the regular search, if you will. Today both Google and Bing recognize the significance of social influence, so they each have a version of a social search where the results you see are influenced by the opinion of your social friends (what they see and share).
The social search is obviously built completely on results gathered from Twitter /Facebook, and may be some other social networks. Ignoring social media means ignoring this new search vertical altogether.
Social Demographics in Local Searches
Local search is a part of regular organic search. Geographic data from popular social networks (such as Foursquare) and geo-related social services is picked up by search engines and in many cases ranks well in local searches.
Social Rank and Organic Search
Here is a heavy weight proof of social media importance in SEO. Remember I mentioned that both Google and Bing now take into ranking consideration the signal of Social Rank/Human Rank/ Twitter Rank?
Danny Sullivan, recognized SEO expert, asked both search engines directly about Social Signals that Google & Bing Really Count.
Social Rank or Human Rank is the calculation of individual authority in social networks, and it calculates how influential and trustworthy a person is. If a person found to be an authority, the links that s/he tweets from his/her twitter account, have additional weight. Not only in social search, but in regular organic search as well!
Since this social signal is mainly based on analysis of Twitter activity, it’s also sometimes referred to as Twitter Rank. So far there is no formalized name for this social signal.
Retweets as Form of Link Building
Though links coming from Twitter pages have a nofollow attribute, this nuance is mostly neglected when both Google and Bing receive a “firehose” data stream from Twitter (constant stream of tweets). In this type of stream (as confirmed by both search engines) links are “followed”.
Here is when the social influence comes to play: though links are “followed”, the significance of the carried link juice depends on the number of tweets/ retweets, and the authority of Twitter users that decide to tweet your message. So if you’re influential, and are re-tweeted a lot, the links you tweet can bear a significant link weight, and thus become an important component of link building strategy in SEO.
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Opening image from toprankonlinemarketing on Flickr, used under Creative Commons license.
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