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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
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