Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Sites that have a high number of social shares, comments, tweets and +1s tend to rank better in Google, according to a new report from Searchmetrics....

How social context is playing a role in SEO and how marketers can adjust their strategies to match the changing character of search.

In the history of search engine optimization the rank of a piece of content in search engine results has typically come down to two key drivers: relevancy and authority. Relevancy is all about using the right keywords in your headlines, sub-headlines and anchor text to match what people are searching for online. Authority has predominantly been defined by the number and type of sites that are linking to your content via inbound links. Pretty standard stuff, right?

Well recently, things have changed a bit. More and more, search engines have begun to incorporate social context into their search results. And it's high time we dive into what role social context is playing in SEO, and how marketers can adjust their strategies to match the changing character of search. So without further ado, let's get into the nitty gritty of what's being called "social search" and learn how it affects marketers.

What is Social Search?

"Social search" is an evolving term for the way in which search engines factor a user's social network -- also referred to as social graph -- into how results are displayed after a search query. In social search, content that has a social connection to you in some way is prioritized. A social connection could mean someone you are linked to via Facebook, Twitter, or any other major social network. Alternately, some forms of social search prioritize content that has been shared by social media influencers, even if those experts aren't directly tied to you....

[Useful basics, clear examples ~ Jeff]

In preparing for our morning show we were doing some research and came across an old story that showed that StumbleUpon was actually driving more traffic than Facebook in January of 2011 and we wondered two things about that - firstly, is it still true, and secondly what would that mean for internet marketing and social media experts who stake their companies social media results on traffic from just Facebook and Twitter?

So we went back to the source of the original data, StatCounter.com for an update for the last 12 months...