Social Media Signals and SEO

Social Signals and SEO

First Off... Who Am I?

Co-author: The Art of SEO CEO: Stone Temple Consulting, 30+

person Digital Marketing and SEO firm Columnist:

Interviewer:

Host of:The Digital Marketing Excellence Show &The Digital Marketing Answers Show

Eric Enge – Fun Fact

I Have Run the Boston Marathon 3 Times!

Moz Correlation Study

Searchmetrics Correlation Study

Be Careful With Correlations!

Most Recent Matt Cutts Statements

Video Summary

• Social Site Web Pages Not treated differently• Only Access Public Pages• Cannot Easily Track or Use Identity– For example, who likes/follows whom– Having to crawl to get the data is a BIG limitation

• Respect NoFollows

Denials Have Been Persitent

“Just trying to decide the politest way to debunk the idea that more Google +1s lead to higher Google web rankings. Let's start with correlation != causation”

August 21, 2013Hacker News

Stone Temple Consulting Study

What Does Google See on Facebook?

Can’t See Likes At All

Can See The Friends Link

Google May Only See 20

I Have 739

From Your “Desktop”?

“Probably not because the javascript that loads more friends is dependent on scrolling the page. There is not a separate version of the page for users without javascript.”AimClear’s

Joe Warner

From Your “Smartphone”?

If Google crawls this they can get a complete list of your Facebook Friends

Bottom Line: They can get this data if they want it.

Lots of Facebook Pages Are Indexed

Public Pages Only

Spider/Crawler/Robot

Private Page

How Many Public

Facebook Posts Does

Google Index?

Bing Results 2010 (New York Post)

Bing Results 2011

Bing Results 2012

With a Social Sidebar

Even Bing Does Not Use Facebook Data

SocialSidebar

“…what does a like mean? Some people like the page, some folks might like the content, some folks might just think it’s funny and likeable. As you said, the likes are a good signal, but they’re not a granular signal of what particular thing you’re actually expressing a like about.”

Bing’sStefan Weitz

On using Likes as votes the way links are used:

Link Code in Facebook

Twitter

Tweet Indexing Over Time

Link Code in Twitter

Google Plus

Google Plus – Personalized Results

Personalization Example

Ranks #2 WhenLogged In, #12When LoggedOut

Google PlusPost inSERPs

Brand Pages Crowd Out Competitive PPC

Stone Temple Consulting Study

Does Google Plus Drive Non-Personalized Rankings?

Code for a Google Plus Share

• This is why people think the links pass value• Note: Google deliberately and carefully architected this to pass PageRank• They did so for a reason• Our opinion that is that it is not treated the same as a traditional link• It is probably filtered in some fashion• Likely value is as a supplemental signal

Three Participating Sites

Two Articles Per Site(6 Total Pages Tested)

Test Page Baseline Page

No Inbound Links to the PagesNo Google Analytics, No G+ Code

How We Used the Baseline Pages

• 7/19: 6 Shares• 7/19: Crawled• 7/29: Indexed• 8/4: 25+ Shares• 8/28 – 9/1: 4

Authoritative Shares

• 1st burst of shares drove indexing

• Initial rankings may be due to domain authority

• Test: Will 2nd or 3rd burst of shares improve ranking?

How We Used the Baseline Pages

• Only one burst of shares

• Used to see if natural ranking volatility >= than that of the test pages

• 7/19: 25+ Shares• 7/19: Crawled• 7/29: Indexed• No Further Shares

1

2

Log File Sequence - Discovery

Indexation

The Strongest Argument for G+ Ranking Impact

7/29/13Initial Indexing

7/19/13 - 6 Shares

Rank

ing

Posi

tion

Of all the terms weMonitored, this wasThe one that showedThe most movement

Baseline Page Low Ranking Terms - BVRa

nkin

g Po

sitio

n

7/19/13 - 41 Shares

For 10 Search Terms - TNERa

nkin

g Po

sitio

n

7/19/13 - 6 Shares7/29/13 – Initial Indexing8/4/13 – 36 Shares

• Sharing a link in Google Plus is not treated the same as a “regular web link

• But, that does not mean it has NO SEO value

Google Tested New Code For a Share

Empty Anchor

Branded Anchor

I think it's always a bit tricky for us when we can recognize that it's a user generated content site & we're not really sure how to trust those links within there, but generally speaking if it's a link that doesn't have any anchor text in it, we'll still treat that as a link.

Google’sJohn Mueller

G+ Ripples Chart

More Complex

Ripples Chart

How Google Plus Shares May Impact SEO(non-personalized)

Interview with Danny Sullivan

Reversal of the Denials?

“It was a complete overhaul of the search engine … they were going to be able to handle link data differently … they could handle new social signals they could not handle before.October 31, 2013

The #DMEShow

What to Expect With Google+?

• Google will leverage G+– More than just personalization and G+ posts in the

results• Will NOT be the same as a web links• Can’t punish people not on G+– Many authoritative authors don’t have G+

accounts– Tail will not wag the dog

Thank You!

Eric Enge

eenge@stonetemple.com@stonetemple

+Eric Enge(508) 485-7751

www.stonetemple.com