I am a search engine optimisation expert, I take websites and I aim to make their overall user experience better in the hope that the website will appear on the search engine results page, get clicked on and answer the search engine users original query. That, for me, is the focus of SEO; to improve the overall service and experience for the users of your website. With that in mind, I have often called into question claims that Twitter (and indeed other social media sites) have a positive effect on SEO. I admit, I can see that having people on social media sites linking to you can have a good effect, it is of course more links to your site. I have always been skeptical of how reliable Google views these links as though. Regardless, it is something I have watched with interest and a willingness to take part in.
Well, thankfully now we have a real and extremely obvious example of how engaging with social media (namely Twitter) can have a genuine, and quite significant impact of your search engine optimisation efforts. Notice my choice of image for this blog post; spot anything of note? Notice how, in the simple Google search for 'weather in Guernsey' my first organically ranked result is a link that was 'shared' by Paul Wood (yes, that is me). Wow! Google have ignored everything else and have decided that my link is clearly the most important weather resource for Guernsey, I must be an expert.
Sadly, I am not an expert on the weather, but what is good here is that Google have taken note of what links people in my Twitter network have shared and have tailored my search results, quite drastically based on what people in my network are talking about. The impact on SEO is clear and could be a game changer. Think about it, all it takes is the ability to build up a significant following of consumers and you could be plugging your products away, content in the knowledge that every time someone who is following you searches for said product, Google will happily give you a free boost up the search rankings.
Big Move From Google
This is indeed a big step from Google and one which I am both excited and scared about. I am excited because it means the world of SEO is going to become even more expansive, far reaching and my day to day job will become even more interesting. I am scared because I think that the new method of SEO presented offers an easy way for unsavory website owners to artificially boost their search engine rankings.
In order to see the special 'shared' links on Google, you must be signed into a Google account. It is through this process of being signed in that Google can determine who you are on Twitter and who you follow etc. So, in order to take advantage of this SEO boost you have to set yourself the task of getting people to follow you, tricky, time consuming, but by no means impossible I am sure you will agree. A competition here, a re-tweet there and your follower list could be looking quite healthy indeed. So, then all you need to do is link to things on your site, wait for your followers to use Google and chances are they will find your site much more easily than before.
Speaking on this new development to Tech Crunch, Google Product Management Director, Mike Cassidy said, "Google will look at how many of your friends share a certain link". Cassidy continued to explain their aim of; "blending the results, increasing the social coverage, and giving users more control."
This all sounds a bit fluffy and 'social media guru' for my liking but I can see what Google are getting at. Google basically want to let users share what they think is interesting and then Google will take note of this and show the shared stuff more prominently. This is good in the sense that undoubtedly relevant stuff will pop up the search results and spammy, over optimised stuff will suffer as a result. The bad news is that stuff that is shared is not always useful, in-fact, some of the people I see on Twitter seem hell bent on sharing a constant stream of rubbish.
So, what is the upshot? Well, really, it will be interesting to see what happens. I will be keeping an eye on how referrals from Google are impacted and weather much changes as a result of new integration with social media. I think the main thing now is that becoming an expert in your field on Twitter has gone from something that is good, to becoming something that is clearly beneficial to your business is the most significant change. Anyway, I am now going to share this blog post on Twitter, and I am sure my followers will see it popping up in a Google search some time soon, at least that is the aim!
