Type “Social Media Influence on SEO” into Google, limit the results to the last week, and you’ll get 341,000 results. Even though these two search terms would yield billions of results if entered individually, combined they demonstrate how the Internet is abuzz with the connection between the two. Late last year both Bing & Google confirmed the trend outright. So, SEO professionals need to understand that social media will likely become even more influential as the year progresses.

Rand Fishkin, SEOMoz’s CEO and one of the top SEO thinkers around (twitter: @randfish), believes SEO would fall by the wayside without social media. In his blog 8 Predictions for SEO in 2012, he notes,

“Already, we're seeing SEO and social media marketing become intrinsically intertwined, but in 2012, I believe we'll see SEO without social fade, just as SEO without link building did from 1999-2000. It's not just that social signals are making their way into the ranking algorithms (in both direct and indirect ways), but also that social is becoming the dominant method of both sharing and discovery for web users.”

SEO experts didn’t focus on social media during its infancy, due to NoFollow tags. Now that those have been removed, and it’s clear that social media is driving content consumption, SEO experts should start taking note of social sharing. Previously, site traffic and backlinks to your site were the main data points used to prove to search engines that your site had valuable, consumable content and was worthy of high search rankings. Now that social sharing, Likes, RTs, and Shares are defining popular content, SEO experts need to put on their content creator hats, or at least help their clients understand this new shift in how rankings are calculated.

Personally, being a White Hat SEO expert, I am pleased that social sharing metrics are being used. Those SEO professionals using questionable tactics will have a harder time tricking search engines into thinking their site is worthy of top rankings.  Since search engines will be using some qualifying social measurements, such as Google’s “Author Authority,” as well as others like engagement level, timing (rss feeds posts), and quality of followers, these Black Hat SEO pros won’t be able to manipulate ranking as much. Search Engine Watch discusses these possible new ranking measurements in their blog, if you want more insight.

Google has done a good job of responding to questions on social site ranking in terms of social sharing:



Now listen, I’m not saying you need to actually create new content as an SEO expert. What I am saying, is that the list of SEO best practices will grow going forward. Clients will need to be educated on how to best use social outlets, how to set up reputable social accounts for “Author Authority,” how to craft engaging messaging that drives click-throughs to the content, and how to best use social networks to promote social sharing. Social media will be playing a much bigger role in SEO in the coming year so make sure you understand how to leverage each outlet to be able to continue to compete for top rankings.

Read other Search Engine Optimization & Search Marketing posts by Jonathan Mackin. Drop Mad*Pow an email about SEO and Social Media at solutions@madpow.net.