Three Ways to Use Social Media to Improve Your Search Rankings

Three Ways to Use Social Media to Improve Your Search Rankings

Posted by Kathleen Booth on Jun 16, 2011 in Blog, Social Media | 0 comments

When Google changed its search algorithm this Spring, those changes (known as the “Panda Update”) dropped the search rankings of more than 20% of all websites. The purpose of the Panda Update was to remove poor quality sites from the top of Google’s results pages but in some cases, the result was a decrease in visibility for many legitimate sites whose search engine optimization (SEO) strategies were based mainly on the creation of landing pages and aggressive tagging.

Matt Cutts, Google’s head of spam, explains: “This update is designed to reduce rankings for low quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

What does the Panda Update mean, in practical terms, for businesses? Social media is more important than ever as part of your search engine optimization strategy. Why? Because Google’s new algorithm puts socially-shared content at the top of Google results.

Given these changes, what should you be doing to earn higher rankings for your business in Google’s search results?

1. Blog: Blogging is one of the most effective – and least expensive – ways to gain visibility online. Google doesn’t rank websites, it ranks webpages – and every individual blog you post is seen by Google as a new webpage. By blogging once a week for a year, you can add 52 new pages to your website!
2. Optimize your blog for keywords: There are many free tools, including the Google keyword analysis tool, that you can use to identify the search terms people use most frequently to get to your site. Get this list and then make sure it has no holes. Add any keywords that you would like people to use (but perhaps they are not currently using) to arrive at your site to come up with one complete list. Once you have a complete list, use it to create an editorial calendar of topics that relate to those keywords and then make sure your blog posts use them and are tagged with them. It’s not simply enough to tag your blog posts – the content the posts contain must match the words you are using to tag them with in order to get the best results from Google.
3. Promote sharing: Google really likes content that is shared online, so make sure that it is very easy for visitors to your blog to share what you are publishing. You can do this by adding social sharing buttons directly to each blog post, and by posting your blogs to your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter where other users of those platforms can easily share your content.

In our opinion, Google’s Panda Update is great news for small businesses. Whereas previously large companies with deep pockets could buy their way to the top of Google’s search results, now you can get to the top the good, old fashioned way – through regularly publishing high quality information and sharing it with your audience.

Do YOU have a blog? If you do, we’d love to hear how blogging has affected traffic to your website. Share your stories here by commenting on this post!