Social has a significant influence on SEO, despite industry gurus suggesting otherwise.
Last year, Matt Cutts said in a YouTube video that Google didn’t count social media metrics such as likes or shares when ranking search results. But fast-forward 12 months and the landscape has changed, with social influencing all areas of search engine optimization, be it on the Web, mobile, or local. While Google doesn’t factor likes and retweets into its algorithm, it does use social to gauge what’s popular.
Two key drivers that have impacted this change are “convergence” and “empowerment,” according to Jason Dailey, head of search at MediaVest. Convergence refers to the different channels coming together, whether it’s local, SEO, paid search, social, or video, whereas empowerment is all about consumers.
“There are a lot of areas that are converging and these are becoming gray territories in terms of where one ends and the next begins,” says Dailey. “Consumers are also becoming more empowered than ever to control the media that they receive and interact with brands. That’s really [where] social plays a key role.”
