Today, our triangle of the most important ingredients to ranking well on Google will be finally completed as we drill down into how social media influences our search engine rankings.

By the way, I’d love for you to let me know how well I did with my debut on Entrepreneurs-Journey, so don’t be shy and give me a shout in the comment section below.

So far we’ve talked about how exactly your content directly influences your rankings, as well as how to effectively use that content to attract quality backlinks.

Check out my previous posts below:

And now the overwhelming, all-present, and powerful social media – what exactly does it have to do with your search engine rankings and how do you use it to your advantage?

Social Media Signals

If a picture is worth a thousand words, let’s start with this screenshot:

According to the 132 world’s leading SEO experts polled for SEOMoz report, most important social-media based factors appear to be:

  1. Authority of tweeters
  2. Number of tweets
  3. Number of FB shares
  4. Authority of sharers

It comes as no surprise that Google might have a way to measure “human” authority on Twitter.

After all, that’s what Klout score, as controversial as it is, is all about as well. If they can figure out how to put a number on your and my sphere of influence, you bet Google can do it and probably do it a whole lot better without a doubt.

Notice that shares on Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Google Buzz don’t matter much, if at all.

I wonder how Google+ will stand up to this… Will it quickly become a thing of the past as so many other Google projects like Google Wave and Google Buzz, or is it here to stay? Only time will tell, I suppose.

Anyway, back to the post.

Before you run off to work on becoming an authority figure on Twitter, let me show you yet another screenshot:

This image is not based on the expert opinion; rather it’s based upon correlations with higher rankings in Google’s top 30 web search results.

The majority of the websites that represent the top 30 rankings for a sample pool of 10,271 keywords display Facebook share counters, as well as get very high total of FB shares, likes, and comments.

Granted, correlation is not causation, meaning if you hurry up and add Facebook sharing buttons to your site hoping to rank for a hot keyword like “internet business blog”, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Plus, Yaro already has that ranking in his pocket – #1 out of some 712M results… not bad, not bad at all.

So What?

So we now have some research backing up what we pretty much knew all along – social media is a powerful influence on how well our business does one way or another.

Big deal, right?

What we, online business owners, really need to know is how can we take advantage of this info and use the theory to empower our sites to rank better on Google – or at the very least, to bring in healthy amounts of referral traffic.

Practical Steps To Successful Facebook Marketing

Even though Twitter definitely has its place as a social search engine ranking factor, I am inclined to think that it’s Facebook that we need to focus on more for better quality traffic and, possibly, for a little help with Google rankings.

So what are the practical suggestions we all can take back to our blogs?

1. Implement Facebook “Like” buttons both at the top and the bottom of each post – preferably with the little thumbnails.

As per Danny Sullivan’s recent conversation with Facebook staff, Facebook says Like buttons get three to five times more clicks if:

  • Versions that show thumbnails of friends are used.
  • They allow people to add comments.
  • If they appear at both the top and bottom of articles.
  • If they appear near visual content like videos or graphics.

2. Add Facebook Comments plugin.

I had it on my site for a while, but noticed that it slowed down my site a bit. In the light of the stats referred to above, I am thinking of giving it another shot, this time tracking the FB traffic a little closer than I was before.

3. Always respond to Facebook comments left on your blog in the same manner you would to a regular comment.

Even more so, since the potential for your comment to be seen by so many eyes is exponentially greater.

4. Be more engaging with your Facebook followers by asking questions (“Would you…?” format works the best), changing things up a bit by posting videos, pictures, etc.

For instance, I’ve always shared links to my new posts on my Traffic Generation Cafe fan page – naturally.

However, only recently it occurred to me to not simply post a link, but to ask a question with it as well.

Take a look at this:

Once I started asking questions, user engagement grew significantly.

5. Use @Tags (works pretty much like Twitter @Mentions) to give credit, acknowledge, thank, etc.

6. Institute a day when your fans can promote themselves on your page in some fashion, for instance: “Share Your Blog Monday”, “Promote Your Business Tuesday”, “Share Your Twitter Account Wednesday” – you get the idea.

7. Give away a free gift to your FB fans exclusively.

8. Chat live with your fans using Facebook Messenger.

9. Do a live event on your Facebook page.

This is something I used to do every Sunday morning, hanging out with my readers and fans, answering all sorts of traffic generation questions, getting to know my readership, and networking.

10. Involve your fans by asking them to help you with your future content creation or a product – this is referred to as “crowdsourcing”.

11. Post directly to Facebook.

For all of you, HootSuite and TweetDeck fans out there – you are much better off posting directly to Facebook instead of going through your favorite social media dashboard.

Besides the fact that posting directly to Facebook allows you to use your post image as an eye-candy (doesn’t seem like a big deal, but believe me, it is – images are a great way to make your post stand out among hundreds of others in one’s news feed), you are also more likely to show up in your fans’ TOP NEWS (the default view for a Facebook news feed) vs get lost in the Most Recent News that no one ever looks at.

facebook top news feed image

Marketing Takeaway

How you interpret and use this data is, of course, entirely up to you.

I only hope that you won’t simply ignore it.

Posts that earn tweets and Facebook shares are also likely to earn natural links, plus send traffic on their own. Not making sure you are taking full advantage of these facts is… well, foolish.

Another big takeaway to take to heart should be this: even if you’re sure that a social metric is highly influential, spamming the heck out of it is probably a dumb way to try to manipulate the rankings.

Ana Hoffman