This document discusses how social signals like Facebook likes and Google +1s can impact search engine rankings. It includes: 1. Two experiments showing that while Facebook likes no longer directly impact indexing, they can still indirectly influence rankings through increased traffic and links. 2. A separate experiment showing that adding "real" Google +1s to pages led to sustained ranking increases for most pages within a few days, indicating +1s are a ranking factor. 3. Tips for succeeding at personalized search like influencing a user's search history in your brand's favor, appearing for related queries, encouraging return visits through good content, and linking to search results from other marketing efforts.

1. Harnessing the Benefits of Social SEO & Personalised Search Marcus Taylor Head of Social SEO at SEOptimise @MarcusATaylor

2. What I’m going to be talking about I’ve split this presentation up into three parts: How Facebook Likes Impact Rankings 1 How Google +1s Impact Rankings 2 How to Succeed at Personalised Search 3 2

3. How Facebook Likes Impact Rankings 3

4. 4 What Google & Bing Say… “We treat links shared on Facebook Fan Pages the same as we treat tweeted links.” – Google, via Search Engine Land interview “Google use Twitter, Google Reader, and other sites but currently do not use Facebook. So Facebook has no real direct impact on rankings as of yet” – Barry Schwarz, SE Roundtable

5. 5 I ran two experiments Likes used to get URLs indexed. Now they don’t.

6. Likes = Traffic = Links & Other Social Signals = Rankings. 6 But: Likes Do Still Impact Rankings Indirectly

7. How Google +1s Impact Rankings 7

9. Existing Google +1 Experiments 9 “+1 markings seem to have a positive effect on the number of impressions in search results because they rank higher when the same person re-visits the same search or rank higher results in the social circle of those who marked the link. All in all, this increased visibility and CTR can raise traffic to a website’s substantially. We measured an increase of 20% with our limited experiment” More info: http://www.seoeffect.com/images/the%20seo%20effect%20google%20%2B1%20button%20experiment.pdf

11. Mixture of homepages / deep pages.

12. Mixture of pages with links / no links.

13. Mixture of pages with social signals / no social signals.More info: http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2011/08/experiment-do-google-1s-impact-your-rankings.html

14. The Results I noticed (sustained) ranking increases within a few days in most instances. 11

15. Google +1s Are a Ranking Factor They’re also likely to become more of a ranking factor in the future. 12

16. How to Succeed at Personalised Search 13

17. You have to influence a user’s search history In favour of your brand or website. 14 Several months later..

18. 15 Appear for ‘comparison’ and head of tail key terms where people start stopping.

19. 16 Be awesome and encourage return visits.

20. 17 Run offline (radio / TV / print) ads with a ‘search for us’ call to action.

21. 18 Run branded events / sponsor events.

22. 19 Link or reference search results from products – tell people to “search Google for X” if you know you rank #1 for that term.

23. Questions? 20 @MarcusATaylor