Google Increases Importance of Social Media

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Google Increases Importance of Social Media

Studies of Google’s algorithm by Searchmetrics managed to identify 22 ranking factors. They discovered five of the 6 most prominent factors in Google’s search results were social signals.

Here are some of the most influential factors found:

  • Facebook shares
  • Number of backlinks
  • Facebook Comments
  • Likes and Tweets

They also discovered a few negative factors including Title Character length and the position of the title keyword.

Backlinks still remain to be one of the most critical factors that affect your rankings, along with other Backlink factors such as links containing keywords. However Google’s Matt Cutts has recently suggested that Backlinks may get discounted in the future, which this recent study definitely backs up.

Another surprising finding is that strong brands continue to perform well, even without meeting the usual requirements of on-page structuring giving reason to presume brand power carries a lot of weight within the search rankings.

However it is no surprise that Google’s algorithm is giving social media more weight and search marketers predicted it.

84% of search marketers said that social signal such as likes, tweets and Google +1s will be more important in 2012, compared to last year.

Social media is likely to accelerate more in the near future becoming more of a crucial factor for Search Engines.

Estate Agents need to be prepared to take advantage of these new findings or may be left behind.

By
SEO Consultant