Social Media & SEO: Does Social Help Search Engine Optimisation?

There was a time when the world’s SEO service providers eyes collectively lit up when faced with the opportunity they believe lay in social media websites providing premium links to their clients’ websites.

We’ve been through that phase and for the most part, social media and SEO are best regarded as separate entities with different skills and mindsets involved.

The search engine optimisation rule – which still applies in part today – is that having a link from a high-traffic, enormous website can provide a massive boost to rankings.

However there are three problems with this.

Having a link from twitter to your website might have seemed thrilling when it all first fired up, but there are things now inherently wrong with such a link.

1. EVERYONE now has scores if not hundreds of links from tweets – therefore such ‘democratisation’ is now simply levelling the playing field. It’s no advantage to any website any more. More links from more tweets does not equal more pagerank.

2. A link is almost worthless if it does not have anchor text embedded in it, and neither Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest allow anchor-text links. So another flop.

3. While the way we do Pinterest for our clients is designed to make their Pinterest profiles rank to the best of its ability, which occasionally sees some Pinterest pages rank their socks off, more recently Google has started penalising Pinterest rankings – Google simply doesn’t want to be a conduit to Pinterest.

The only social media which has an uncorrupted, non-penalised SEO quality is … as you’d expect … Google+ … why? Well it’s nepotism of course. Google is trying its damndest to save this failed social media platform by investing SEO value in it.

The old joke in our workshops when we ask “who’s on Google+?” and a handful of people put up their hands, is to say “nice to see a few Google staff in the room”.

This can now be extended – but it’s nowhere near as funny with an addendum, to include “oh and a few SEO people also”.

Google has made Google+ into a crucial component for clients who wish to protect their Google Places / Google Local rankings.

The irony is that Google Places are what we regard as a “gutter”. Once you’re in them you can’t get out!

We have a technique for ranking our clients ABOVE the Google Places results so while many business people covet a spot in Google Places – and therefore have to tread the wobbly boards of Google+ to shore up their listings, the truth is once in there, you can’t transcend them.

If you want to get with an SEO program that will rank you ABOVE Google Places results call us on 1300 321 814.