Improtance of Social Media Links in Google and Bing Search Results

Links Shared in Social Media Matter in Search

Search and social go well together, and the search engines are finding more and more ways to use them together. In fact, the right combination's of these two elements could eventually dictate who has the most useful tools for users.
It's become more and more clear over time that having a strong social presence is helpful in building a strong search presence for a variety of reasons, but it's not been so clear, just how the search engines have looked at things like Twitter and Facebook profiles when it comes to organic search ranking.

Search Engine Land Chief Danny Sullivan posted an important article about this very topic, with some rare and surprisingly direct answers from both Google and Bing. While, neither exactly gave away their respective secret sauces, it would appear that they have set some things straight.

Google


Google reportedly uses when an article is retweeted or referenced in Twitter as a signal in organic and news rankings (even though links on Twitter are nofollowed). They also use it to enhance the news universal results (based on how many people share an article).

Google "computes and uses author quality" for when someone tweets. When Sullivan asked if they calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending on who tweets it, Google Responded, "Yes we do use this as a signal, especially in the 'Top links' section [of Google Realtime Search]. Author authority is independent of PageRank, but it is currently only used in limited situations in ordinary web search."

Google says it treats links shared on Facebook Fan pages the same way as tweeted links, but they have no personal Facebook wall data. Authority for Facebook Pages is also treated like Twitter.

So, the more authoritative the crowd sharing links to your content, the better. Not that different than PageRank.
Bing

When it comes to Twitter, Bing tells Sullivan it also looks at social authority of users and more specifically, looks at how many people they follow and how many follow them, adding that this can add "a little weight" to a listing in regular search results (though it carries more in Bing's separate Social Search). Bing decides when links should carry more weight based on the person who tweets it.

As far as Facebook, Bing currently looks at links shared on Facebook that are marked as being shared to "everyone" and those from Fan Pages. "We can tell if something is of quality on Facbook by leveraging Twitter," as Sullivan paraphrases Bing's response. "If the same link is shared in both places, it’s more likely to be legitimate."

Bing does not use its new Facebook data in ordinary web search...yet.

Why Local is Lekker.

Local search has become one of the most affordable and important ways for small businesses to be found by their customers. In a recent .Com Score study, they found that 42% of local searchers wanted to find a business within 6-15 km of their home or place of work. Searchers are looking for more relevance than ever before. With statistics like this, it’s more imperative you are giving those local users every opportunity to find your business.

The reality is that there are many factors that can contribute to a successful local, online presence. In today’s market, it takes being available at different times and in varied formats to reach the right audience. One of the main ways prospects can find you is through a local business listing. With prime placement right at the top of the search results page, these listings give a previously unheard of visibility to small and local businesses.

So what can you do reach that coveted prime placement, a.k.a. the Google “7-pack”?

   1. Submit your listing- Seems pretty simple, right? Well, it’s a crucial step. Just submitting and verifying your listing can sometimes be enough in less competitive markets. Google takes the verified information as the most trusted, so make sure your listing is claimed.
   2. Have only one, optimized listing for your business – When you submit your information to Google, you could have the option to choose existing business information, if it exists for your company. You don’t want to have competing listings out there, so always claim the existing information and optimize it- so there is only one active listing. I have seen claiming another listing significantly help a business rank better.
   3. Choose correct categories for your business – Google provides different industry options for you to choose from. These are one of the main factors that determine which searches your listing could show for. Make sure these accurately describe your products and services.
   4. Put your industry and target area in the title of your listing- This information helps Google, but it also improves your visibility for those keywords.
   5. Be sure to use a local phone number in your listing- Using a local number lets both the user and the search engine know that you are in fact located where you say you are.
   6. Create a description that’s informative- This descriptive area provides you the chance to give the most information about your company. Use your keywords and provide the details that would be valuable for your customer base.
   7. Reviews are important! Positive reviews are a huge factor on whether or not someone will choose you business over another. Not only that, but the presence of reviews (both negative and positive) can increase the ranking of your listing. In some industries, I have seen listings perform better by simply having more reviews than their competitors.
   8. Keep your listing up to date- Updating the information tells the search engines that it’s relevant. It can be as simple as updating a coupon, or other details.
   9. Make sure your listing is 100% complete! Don’t underestimate the value of having a completed listing. Google is all about the user experience, and a complete listing shows that your business is providing the most information.
  10. Submit your info to other directories as well. Google actually pulls your business info from other sites, so it would behoove you to have accurate, standard information about your business from as many sources as possible, any good directory will offer FREE listings. Think twice before paying for listing on so called directories who drive no traffic.

Ranking your website can be hard work and very confusing, and if done incorrectly can hurt your website rather then benefit it, if you would like the experts to perform your SEO for you, look no further then Scream Media. Contact us today on 021 5590800 for a free no obligation chat about your website needs.

Scream Media - Cape Town - online marketing - ppc - seo - social media marketing - website design

Google Page Rank Explained

You've just built your website and you want to show up on the search engines. You start reading about SEO and one of the first things that jumps out at you is something called "Google PageRank." You know about the big dog of the search engines, but what is PageRank and why is it important in what you're trying to do?

Any good marketing coach can explain that easily. If your site is placing high in free (organic) search results, you're getting free advertising. Notice the word "free." That's always a good thing. Building a strong PageRank (PR) by getting good quality links coming in to your site takes time, but it isn't going to eat a hole in your pocketbook. 

You want to work on raising your site's PR to get "authority" with the search engines. A site with "authority" gets better visibility in search results. Really understanding the algorithm behind your site's PR will likely have you reaching for a bottle of aspirin. In the beginning, just concentrate on understanding the basics and how they relate to your efforts to promote your site.

How Is PR Defined?

Google says PR is all about the "uniquely democratic nature of the web" and "using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value." Basically, a link from one page to another is a vote for that page. However, not all votes in this democracy are equal. Some votes come from higher-quality pages and are weighed more heavily. (Other factors in determining PR include the relevance of search phrases on a page and actual traffic to the page.)

How Is PageRank Expressed?

PR values are expressed on a scale of 0 to 10. Sites from 0 to 2 are probably pretty new to the Web and have few incoming links. Sites that have made it to PR3 to PR5 are fairly well established; PR6 and above are really popular and have a lot of high-quality links. There are very few sites that make it to the PR7 to PR10 range.

The ones that are ranked that high are usually owned by big corporations or major media outlets like the Wall Street Journal (PR8). Improving your site's PR by getting relevant, high-quality, incoming links is one of the most affordable SEO methods at your disposal. Rather than trying to get to a specific number, just concentrate on improving your number.

Is My Site's Homepage The Only Page With PR?

No, each page in your site will be assigned a PR, something that is emphasized in marketing coaching as a valuable tool. You can use relevant interlinking to distribute PR throughout all your pages.

Huh? Well, just hang on to that thought for a minute. For right now, just understand the concept that some pages in your site may earn a higher PR than others, and that you can use that to your advantage. 

PageRank Passes From One Page To Another

Here's how it works. A page with a high PR passes some of its value to a low PR page over a link. You can use this to promote your site in a couple of ways. When your site's pages are interlinked in a relevant way, PR gets distributed more evenly throughout the site. Also, you can "court" relevant sites that belong to other people through your link-building campaign. This is really how your site starts to gain "authority."

Start By Building Your Index Page's PR

Generally, marketing coaches will tell you to begin by working on your home page's PR. This can be time-consuming, and not just because you'll be building relationships with other site owners. You have to do your time in what's popularly called the Google "sandbox." This just means that new sites like yours probably won't get any PR at all for the first few months you're on the Web. 

How Do I Check My PR?

There are a number of free, online tools for checking PR including PRChecker and SearchStatus. At PRChecker you type in a page's URL to see its PR. SearchStatus is a FireFox extension that shows a site's PR at the bottom of your browser. (It also shows your site's Alexa rating, another method to measure online "importance.") You can also install the Google Toolbar for Firefox or Internet Explorer and enable the PageRank function.

Is Building My PR All I Need To Do?

A marketing coach will tell you that having a strong PR is only one part of your SEO campaign. For instance, say you're looking around for a site to link to yours. You find one with a high PR, but it's a site that sells links. Move on. Their high PR number doesn't do you any good because a link from that site to yours will have a lower quality and will pass less authority to you.

Understanding the basics of PageRank is essential in putting together a high-quality link-building campaign for your site, but don't get fixated on the PR number and ignore other important facts. Just gain a basic understanding of what PR is and how it functions and use that to your advantage in building a reputation of authority for your site.

Scream Media currently has a page rank of 4/10, the new site has been live for only 6 months. If you would like to enjoy a similar page rank, contact Scream Media today on 021 559 0800

Who's Linking to your Website?

Linking is the mechanism that connects all the pages on the Internet. You've got links throughout your web site to let people navigate their way around. You may have links going out to other web sites that you think will be useful for your visitors. And hopefully you have links coming into your web site from independent sources.

All types of links can impact your search engine optimization results, helping determine where your web site shows up online. Though the hardest to control, inbound links pointing to your site can make the biggest impact.

At its most basic, the concept is that if several high-quality sites are linking to your web site, then Google and other search engines figure your site must be a popular, valuable resource - and they will be more likely to show it higher in their search results. In effect, your site receives "link juice" from other web pages that link to it.

However, it's not enough to secure a couple links and then sit still. The Google PageRank (Scream Media has a home page rank of 4/10) algorithm looks at the pattern of links to your site as they build over time.

Building the right kind of links can bring a major payoff, while a wrong turn could get you penalized - and the Google Sandbox is not easy to dig out of.

Armed with a bit of knowledge and some creativity, you can build up valuable incoming links naturally and powerfully, avoiding the traps that plague amateurs.

Spice Up Your Links With Some Variety

There are all kinds of link farming schemes to grow links, and you need to run the other way from these. This is also called reciprocal linking, where you exchange links with other web sites that will then link to you on a mass scale. Warning: Google is onto this.

While it's perfectly advantageous to link to high-quality sites that also link to you, the key here is to cultivate a natural mix of links over time.

Is it natural to suddenly have 100 links pointing to your site, all with the same text? Of course not. When people link to you naturally, they might use your business name (SEO Advantage) or some variation on a descriptive phrase (search optimization company). If too many similar links exist, it can signal that those links were generated artificially and potentially result in penalties.

Also consider which pages on your site inbound links point to. Your home page is probably going to get the most, but it's natural to have links pointing to specific pages inside your web site, too. Cultivate links to your services, your blog, your news pages, your articles, etc., to help those pages get indexed and build their own PageRank. Called deep links, these can help bolster your site's overall performance. 

Some links also carry a title tag, which is indicated in the source code. This is a little too technical to go into detail here, but if you can influence this you'll want both the link text and title to vary a bit among the links pointing to your site. Once again, the key is to grow your links in a natural pattern.

Not Every Link Carries The Same Value

Links from popular, established web sites usually carry the greatest value. That's because they have high PageRank from plenty of other people already linking to them. A link from CNN.com, for example, will carry much more weight than a link from a free press release distribution site that few people know of. No-follow tags are the bane of naive link builders. It's tempting to think you can just link to pages on your site from your Twitter tweets, Facebook and other social media applications. However, many of these sites as well as online ads and also some directories employ "no follow" tags that prevent the search engines from following a link to your site. In this case, it's as if the link doesn't exist in the eyes of the search engines. (That doesn't mean the links aren't valuable to people who find you and follow the link, it's just not helping your web site show up in Google.) 

So, How Can A Business Build Incoming Links Naturally?

The mix of links created out on the web pointing back at your web site should avoid skewing toward any particular type. A good mix that you can influence may include:

• Directories - Professional organizations, online communities and forums, business directories, etc. can all potentially provide good links to your site. There are several premium directories that are staples in an SEO firm's link building toolkit, like DMOZ.org. Keep in mind that your listing itself should be optimized in order to reap the full link juice benefits.

• Press Releases - Writing and submitting press releases online can help you get your news in front of more people and build links to your site. (Be sure to use best practices for writing and evaluate carefully your outlets for good links).

• Blogs - Link to relevant pages on your site from your blog. Build relationships online with other bloggers, too, and they may want to link back to you! Active blogs with high visibility and large followings are going to be your best bet, but you can mix it up over time targeting lesser known bloggers, too. Keep in mind that as other sites grow in PageRank, the value passed to your site will also grow.

• Create Some Link Bait - Make sure your content is so fascinating or funny that people will want to tell others about it. This is the ultimate for building naturally growing incoming links but of course hard to do.

A sample schedule could mean every month you líst your site in two good dírectories, link to interior site pages from a couple relevant posts in your blog, distribute one press release to news sites, and write one great article that other people may want to link to and then let them know about it.

A word about selecting outlets is in order, too. You'll need to carefully assess each place you target in order to determine the link value they can pass onto you. For example, different press release submission sites and directories can give you a wide variety in link value. This can be time-consuming to determine but worth it when your site's PageRank starts to climb.Want to know more about how Scream Media can build links for you? Contact us today on 021 5590800.

Top 5 SEO - Search Engine Optimisation Questions

1. Is there any fixed rule for Google as far as SEO is concerned? If so, what are the steps?
If only! There are no fixed rules because every website is different and has different needs. There are basic things that all websites need to do in order to improve their chances of showing up in Google search results for relevant phrases, but no magic formula.

2. Do the following play important roles in website page ranking and positioning?

  - Page Rank
Yes, real PageRank (PR), the kind that only Google knows about plays a very large part in websites showing up (or not) for search queries that are relevant to it. For example our site www.h2lonlinemarketing.co.za has a page rank of 3/10, we would not consider link backs to any site with a lesser page rank.

-  The number of incoming links
Not so much in and of itself. Real PR, as mentioned above, is calculated not only on the number of links, but also on the quality of those links. A handful of links from authoritative, trustworthy, relevant pages should far outweigh hundreds of links from so-so sites. The key here is quality not quantity.

  - Keyword density
This is very important when writing content for your site. It is more then helpful to have the keyword phrases that you'd like to show up being used within the content of your page. Surely, if your page is about a certain something (your keyword phrase), how could that phrase NOT be on the page?


3. Is there any special technique for content writing?
Yes there is a special technique, but I highly suggest hiring a professional marketing copywriter. You will see a positive return on your investment very quickly if you do.

4. Should we cater to code-to-text ratio while developing websites?

There's not one shred of evidence that this would have an effect on where a page would show up in the search results for a relevant search query.

5. If active scripting is a must for webpage development, how harmful can it be for PageRank and positions?

It's typically not harmful if used correctly because it's usually done before a browser (or search engine spider) sees a page. To users and search engines, your dynamically generated pages are just static HTML by the time they get to them. Still, not all dynamically generated pages are created equal. There are some ways of developing your site that are less search friendly than others. For example, some JavaScript menus, some AJAX, etc.