The SEO Benefits of Social Networking with Facebook and Google+

The best way to rank higher on a Search Engine is to build a BETTER website since SEO is not something you do 'to' a website it is how the website is built.  Strong valid content, proper META, TITLE and ALT Tags, formatting of pages and links all lead to higher rankings.  There are direct benefits from social networking since a key aspect of the Search Engine algorithms has always been 'how many links from other sites go to your website' and what is the value of those other sites.

Facebook is still the leader online with 300 times more daily traffic than Google.  Google is attempting to draw some of the user base back with Google+ social network.  Google+ is built to be Search Engine friendly with the following key attributes:

• Content is crawled nearly instantly (it IS Google) unlike Twitter and Facebook
• Each post has a unique URL (the first 45-50 characters of the post are the title tag)
• Google indexes the text of every post and creates hash tags based on top keywords
• Any links to external websites are indexed and crawled which may lead to higher page rank
• Posts that are shared, interacted with and +1'd are seen as more important

There seems to be a correlation between highly followed and interacted 'Authors' or 'Pages' with higher value for posts made from more popular profiles or pages.  This means that an author (profile) who posts links to external websites with strong well written text that receives multiple interactions is valued higher than posts made by other profiles with little to no interaction.  

The image above shows how Google+ automatically pulls and displays the title of the post or page that was shared.  It also illustrates the 'Likes' and 'shares noted in the numeric values (+20 people and 1 share on the left and +33 people and 4 shares on the right).  Google does not directly follow the links to external URL's (website addresses) from posts but the people using Google+ do so so there is a benefit.  

The key is interaction not just posts, the value comes from connections of the connections creating exponentially vast networks who see your information as each new person '+' or shares your post.  Google owns Google+ so ALL content posted on Google+ is instantly indexed.  One study attributes Google+1's as having a slightly higher value than Facebook interaction although it is .30 for +1's and .27 for Facebook so it is a narrow margin.  

The top factor remains the quality of the web page or web site content which is where SEO is invaluable.  Building a proper website in the proper architecture with the proper content has always been the best way to rank higher on search engines.  The Internet Experts at Internet Builder Consulting have been teaching the values of Google+ for years and now the proof is in the SEO results!  If your company needs a better built website with SEO and Social Marketing for a complete solution contact the experts at Internet Builder Consulting today 816-842-7774

Robert 'Dot Com' Jackson
Internet & Technology Expert
Internet Builder Consulting - Building BETTER Websites, SEO and Social Marketing Solutions since 1995