social media signals and seo
DESCRIPTION
Presentation Covering Detailed Studies on Google Plus Impact on SEO, Facebook Impact on SEO, and Twitter Impact on SEO. Also Includes Speculation on How Google May Use These Signals in the Future.TRANSCRIPT
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
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