Testing Social Signals
What makes for good SEO?
With Google maturing and adapting its algorithm on a regular basis it can be difficult to be sure what really does have an impact when it comes to search engine optimisation.
There are some factors we know for certain. Content is a critical component of effective SEO, and not just any content; it must be original, regularly updated and well written.
Some of this is for Google’s direct benefit and some, like well written content, because it attracts links which Google then uses as an indicator of importance in its algorithm.
A good headline title containing key phrases are almost certainly a factor and formatting text with the correct html heading, bold and italics tags can assist.
Keywords A Thing Of The Past
We also know that meta-keywords, hangovers from SEO in the early years, play no discernible role in modern search engine optimisation. The meta-description may be used to display in the search results, and in fact Google is using good meta-descriptions more now than it has in the past. Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, confirms these facts in the short video below.
There is also lots of discussion around the impact of Social Media on search engine rankings. With Google+ developing rapidly it would only make sense that activity on this platform, related to your website, would have an effect on your rankings. In a bid to determine whether Social Media was impacting rankings TastyPlacement Inc. conducted the following experiment.
Social Media, The Future Of SEO
Setting up 6 similar websites based in 6 US cities they left them to settle in for 10 months then began their experiment. Promoting 5 of the websites with a different social platform, using the 6th as a control site, they measured the results.
Probably no surprise, but the website promoted using Google+ saw the biggest increase in organic search rankings.
Does your SEO strategy embrace Social Media and Google+ in particular?
The full results are shown in the infographic below:
Infographic authored by
TastyPlacement, a web design and SEO company, To view the original post, see the original
Social Media Infographic.