A review of the state of social media signals and SEO. Includes the results of a study that measures Google Plus Impact on SEO (actual causation, not correlation), and a study that measures Google's efforts to index Facebook content.
2. First Off... Who Am I?
Co-author: The Art of SEO
CEO: Stone Temple Consulting, 30+
person Digital Marketing and SEO firm
Columnist:
Interviewer:
13. Will Google Find More of Your Friends?
AimClear’s
Joe Warner
“Probably not because
the javascript that
loads more friends is
dependent on scrolling
the page. There is not
a separate version of
the page for users
without javascript.”
21. On using Likes as votes the way links are used:
Bing’s
Stefan Weitz
“…what does a like mean? Some
people like the page, some folks might
like the content, some folks might just
think it’s funny and likeable. As you
said, the likes are a good signal, but
they’re not a granular signal of what
particular thing you’re actually
expressing a like about.”
27. Code for a Google Plus Share
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This is why people think the links pass value
Note: Google deliberately and carefully architected this to pass PageRank
They did so for a reason
Our opinion that is that it is not treated the same as a traditional link
It is probably filtered in some fashion
Likely value is as a supplemental signal
39. Example TNE Phrases
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"It truly is a very special part"
"from childhood and as an adult"
"New England is such a"
"the relaxed and friendly nature"
"The entire area has the BEST"
"beautiful parks and gardens and museums"
"from Great Barrington to Lee"
"the locals with such"
"a memorable weeklong"
"quaint town when"
40. The persistent denials
August 21, 2013
Hacker News
“Just trying to decide
the politest way to
debunk the idea that
more Google +1s
lead to higher
Google web
rankings. Let's start
with correlation !=
causation”
42. Reversal of the Denials?
October 31, 2013
The DME Show
“It was a complete
overhaul of the search
engine … they were going
to be able to handle link
data differently … they
could handle new social
signals they could not
handle before.