The major search engines have shown that there is value in social media, and what you do on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ factors into ranking algorithms. In this session, we will provide tips for webmasters to make their site more accessible and "social media friendly." From extensions to conversation, we will discuss the integration of social and search and how you can maximize your online presence.

1. Pubcon Austin 2014
Social Signals and SEO

2. Social Signals and SEO Overview
• History of Social Signals
• Google Being Vocal about Social
• Setting Up Social Media Profiles
• Sharing content properly
• Social Signals’ SEO research, studies
• Social Signals’ Future

3. Social Signals and SEO
• Real-Time Search Launched December 2009
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-launches-latest-results-realtime-search/15290/
• Google goal: to strive to bring us “the freshest, most
comprehensive and relevant search results over an ever
expanding universe of content on the multitude of devices” we
“use to access it.”
• Google, Circa 2009
• July 2011, Twitter
Firehose ended.

4. Social Signals and SEO
Matt Cutts at SES San Fran 2012 Keynote:
“Google has a 10 year plan for relying on social factors as a part of
the algorithm… In the short term, Google is still relying on links as
an important ranking factor.”
Question: Are social signals a ranking factor?
“They have to have access to the data. Some sites are blocked,
Facebook, etc.. If they can’t crawl, then they won’t have the data.”

5. Social Signals and SEO
Matt Cutts at SES San Fran 2012 Keynote:
Regarding real time search:
“Twitter is like a private nightclub. Fundamentally they can
suspend anyone if they want. Anyone can compete with Google if
they can crawl better.
Google announced last week (in 2012) that they crawl 20 billion
pages a day. When the Twitter firehose deal ended, they were
blocked from crawling. When Twitter went away, Google was
leery about relying on that data.”
(Was this when they started to change their tune about signals?)

6. Social Signals and SEO
• Set up social profiles
• Contribute, update regularly
• Share content
• Add friends/followers
• Be active! Every single day...

7. Social Signals and SEO
• Set up Business Page (Facebook.com/globerunnerseo)
• Google crawls biz pages, not personal accounts
• Promote Facebook post, even for $5
• Bing has FB personal account data
• Does anyone care about Bing rankings?
• Sorry, Duane Forrester!

8. Social Signals and SEO
• Wrote a post yesterday about Pubcon Austin.
• Posted on blog, promoted
• Only search result with
Google Authorship snippet,
on page 1 for
“Pubcon Austin 2014”
within hours
• Facebook sponsored post
• Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn

9. Social Signals and SEO
• Don’t follow more than following you
• Post on your blog? Share the URL, not a short URL.
• Tweet of URL helps get URL crawled quickly.

10. Social Signals and SEO
• Full personal profile with good photo/avatar is good.
• Share your blog posts, articles, updates.
• “Like” contacts’ updates, they get emailed that you liked it.

11. Social Signals and SEO
• Google+ Local biz (page), verify listing, used for Publishership
• Google+ Personal Account, used for Authorship
• Google Publishership: Important for home page, content pages
• Google Authorship:
Important for blogs, sites with multiple authors
• If employee leaves company, leave authorship in tact.

12. Social Signals and SEO
• Fill Out Entire Profile, Every Field
• Summary with Interesting Facts About Yourself
• Add relevant keywords
• Get local – add location

13. Social Signals and SEO
• Write Great Content, share Great Content
• Manage Your Contacts, Put in Circles
• Join Niche Specific Communities
• Pay Attention to Your Ripples
• Create a Visually-Rich Experience
• Use Google+ Hangouts
• Display Your Google Plus Badge on Your Site

14. Social Signals and SEO
• Watch hot posts, network with influencers based on Ripples

15. Social Signals and SEO
• Search for Circles “Keyword Circle” or “SEO Circle”.
• Find others who shared their circles
• Add those people all at once, move later to other circle

16. Social Signals and SEO
• Include Social Icons in Key Places
• Show actual number of +1s, Tweets, etc.
• +1 buttons, Tweet, LinkedIn, Facebook Like Button
• WordPress? Social Media Counters Plugin

17. Social Signals and SEO
• Post on site, get ready to promote immediately
• Write alternate titles, headlines, summaries
• Each social share gets unique title, headline, summary
• Network with others to help promote:
- bloggers write alternative post, summary post, links to you
- promote both summary posts and main post
• Promoting posts need to happen quickly: within 2 hours
• Building momentum with social shares is key

18. Social Signals and SEO
Matt Cutts says “Facebook and Twitter Pages Are Treated Like Any
Other Web Page On the Internet”.
http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-facebook-twitter-pages-are-treated-like-anyother-web-page-on-the-internet-182370
Think of social pages, shares, and profiles as pages.
• Get links from those pages.
• How to get good links? Network socially with influencers.
• When you interact with influencers:
Their profile links to your profile, could pass PageRank.

19. Social Signals and SEO
• Building up a following counts more
• Authority counts, build “Author Rank”
• History of sharing good content
• History of writing, authoring good content
• History of authoring content that gets shared.

20. Social Signals and SEO
• Technically, we know they don’t count.
• Does it matter, really? No. Keep sharing!
Studies and research:
Does Facebook activity impact SEO?
http://www.stonetemple.com/does-facebook-activity-impact-seo/
Measuring Google Plus Impact on Search Rankings
http://www.stonetemple.com/measuring-google-plus-impact-on-search-rankings/
Google SEO: How Google Impacts Search Results
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2307518/Google-SEO-How-Google-ImpactsSearch-Results

21. Social Signals and SEO Thank You
Bill Hartzer
Senior SEO Strategist
Globe Runner SEO
Email: Bill@GlobeRunnerSEO.com
Mobile: (214) 236-4378
Office: (972) 538-0260 Ext. 7076
Direct: (469) 645-1231
Web: http://www.globerunner.com
Blog: http://www.billhartzer.com
Twitter: @bhartzer