Important social network activity for site optimization

[wdny]

Hello,

As per my latest research, I realized that in nowadays Google determines importance of the website based on social network activities & participation. In other word, it is very important for Google if website have RSS FEEDS, Twitter, Fasebook accounts (with links back to the website), Blog (updated regularly, with API submission to Google Blog), YouTube and other social media accounts with videos (link back to the website).

Do you think anything else website can have to bring more value for search engine eyes? anything you can suggest to put in this list. I know about how important to have incoming links form quality website and etc... But my main concern if there is any other ways to bring the website into social network live.

Please share your thoughts.

Thank you,

[tedster]

I don't think Google has any definite requirements for social activity in order to get good rankings, but it can help. My current feeling is that Google may have more than one "algo", if you will, and that the socially weighted algo kicks in only for some queries - those in particular verticals especially areas where the "latest thing" is important to the search user.

That said, what is going to matter is that there is a genuine discussion going on out there, and not just a presence that the site itself can somehow manufacture.

Are there high influence or well-connected members in your market who talk about you? Then that's a plus. Do your YouTube videos collect significant natural comments? Then that's another plus. Are these conversations ongoing, or are they just once and done? And so on. But just having a profile page on a whole big batch of social media sites is probably not a big help to organic ranking.

[aristotle]

Most social networking sites automatically put a nofollow tag on all outbound links. So it isn't clear to me how much your participation on these sites will help your Google rankings.

[echwa]

I agree with Tedster. Google of course are using the different real time platforms to extract currency of data but you can bet they will also be applying a series of dampening filters to data extracted from these sources.

Aristotle, I saw a statistic somewhere a little while back saying that of all the links on the web there are something like 1.7% having the rel=nofollow attached to them - goes to suggest users are not posting *lots* of links in public which are outside of the social network they are using.

Anyone seen some studies on the external linking volumes of a typical social network user?

[internetheaven]

Yeah, I'm not seeing this myself either. I'm pretty sure I put up a post on WW about an experiment we did where we bought something like £50,000+ worth of press releases, youtube video creation, social media marketing, twitter writers etc. etc.

Lots of buzz on hundreds of social networks and the comments on our youtube videos are still collecting.

That site has never, ever passed the sites we run that use traditional SEO ... it hasn't even passed the site that does reciprocal linking as it's main rnaking booster!

[aristotle]

Aristotle, I saw a statistic somewhere a little while back saying that of all the links on the web there are something like 1.7% having the rel=nofollow attached to them - goes to suggest users are not posting *lots* of links in public which are outside of the social network they are using.

echwa - I don't know if 1.7% is correct or not for the web as a whole. This thread concerns social networking sites, and What I said is that on many of them, 100% of the external links are nofollow.

[edited by: tedster at 1:58 am (utc) on Apr 18, 2010]
[edit reason] I added a quote box [/edit]

[echwa]

Yes I understood your post the first time Aristotle ;-) I wondered if there were any studies specifically about social networking outbound links and the volume of those links which have nofollow applied...hopefully someone may have done some analysis on this.

[wdny]

It is not about getting link from social networking website with do-follow tag. I think Google now determines value of the website not only on quality and quantity of incoming links, but also its participation in social media live as I mentioned in my original post. After latest Algo update, I saw some websites boosted in rank even without many incoming links, but at the same time they have accounts on facebook, YouTube, Twitter and some blog activities (not much). I think Google is paying a lot of attention to social networking live then ever before. Social network is a future for Internet, as we all already witnessed that Google placing new twits from twitter pages results on first page.

[internetheaven]

Social network is a future for Internet

Social networking has always existed. It's the future for everything. It started with roladex, moved to emails, then to sites like LinkedIn. I think what you meant was that sites like Facebook are the future of the internet ... and it's not. It's a fad that will end after it's sale or under the weight of impending lawsuits and government fines.

as we all already witnessed that Google placing new twits from twitter pages results on first page.

I think you need to read more about this. Reason suggests darker motives for Google including Twitter ... and then stuffing it to the bottom of the page where no-one will see it!

[tedster]

darker motives

That's mysterious enough - what is reason suggesting to you?

[internetheaven]

darker motives

That's mysterious enough - what is reason suggesting to you?

Just that Twitter didn't really have a huge spam problem because everyone's account was opt in.

Google have painted a huge target on Twitter's backs by including them on the FIRST PAGE of Google results. Their open message to spammers: "spamming Twitter will get you on the first page of Google".

Google have always been jealous of Twitters success and abilities, I can't think of a more perfect way to destroy them. Twitter must be wetting themselves right now, and probably locked in to a contract. Their internal search functions are going to be so much harder to make good.