I’ve talked a lot about the factors that will get a website ranked well. And since Google is the primary search engine, it important to ensure that your optimization and targeting efforts are focused primarily on them. If you’ve read my previous blog posts about the top ranking criteria, you already know much of what is needed. For example, I have noted that primary criteria is time on the web, keyword rich page titles and heading tags, a good page description and keywords individualized for page, keyword rich menu systems and links to interior pages, quality inbound links, ample keyword rich text copy on your pages, and an effective social media presence.
What you likely don’t know, which came as a bit of surprise to me, was the importance now being placed on Social Media. In a sense, I guess this is no surprise since websites which receive the most traffic, have repeat visitors, multiple page views, and visitors who stay for a long duration of time on the site will do better in the search rankings. In this regard, a new SearchMetrics study was done that shows that the volume of Facebook and Twitter shares that a Web page generates is closely correlated to how high it ranks in Google searches. This of course reinforces the need for every website to take their social media presence seriously, especially Facebook and Twitter.
That being said, there are some things you need to be careful of not doing. Avoid having too many ads on a page, these are known to have a negative effect on search visibility, and they will often turn off a prospective visitor which will result in a high bounce rate.
The key findings of the study follow:
Social media’s effect on search
The popularity of Facebook and Twitter “likes” and “tweets” correlate very strongly with good rankings in Google. The number of Facebook Shares that a Web page has received appears to have the strongest association. Twitter is far behind Facebook but is still the sixth strongest criteria of Google ranking factors.
Established websites and brands have a ranking advantage
As I’ve noted before, the longer your domain is active, the better chance you will have in the rankings. This is especially true for top brands. In fact strong brands will rank high even if they don’t follow the traditional SEO strategies such as keyword rich page titles, headings, etc.
Excessive advertising hurts rankings
Too many or low quality advertisements are a negative ranking factor in Google’s attempt to lower the search visibility of poor quality results. What might be surprising is that Google ranks low sites that have a high percentage of Google AdSense ads. This follows Google’s new ranking algorithm which encourage text content to be placed near the top, and ads will decrease the space available for good text content.
Quality of links
The number of backlinks is still one of the primary factors in achieving a Google rankings, though a site needs to have links that looks natural, not achieved through artificial means.
Keyword domains achieve top results
I recently wrote a blog post about domain strategies that work. One of these was the importance of having keywords in the domain name. This recent study confirmed the importance of this.
As you can see, the importance of social media engagement has become very important. If you have yet to begin, or actively manage your Facebook and Twitter accounts, I encourage you to do this, and of course let me know if you need help.
