How Social Media is Changing the SEO Industry

It is painfully cliché to talk about “the rise of social” and “the power of social media.” That happened a long time ago. Now it’s settled, and we can make some real progress.

The power of social lives on beyond its ubiquity, and wields a transformative impact on SEO. Please understand that I’m not going to propagate any myths about how to increase your rankings via social media. Nor am I going to propose that SEO-is-dead-so-long-live-social. Instead, I’ll attempt to demonstrate how social is infringing upon the traditional realm of SEO as a major factor in how people find information, convert, and interact with the Internet.

The argument over the correlation of social likes and search rankings is moot. 

First, social likes are important. Their impact upon search rankings, however, is not relevant to this discussion.

Bloggers and pundits love to discuss the search ranking value of an active social presence. “Do Facebook ‘Likes’ Increase Search Rankings,” asks one author. (Her answer, interpreted:  ”Uh, we’re not sure.”) Groupon explains “How to Improve Your Search Rankings with Social Media.” Others croon that Facebook comments can improve one’s rankings.

There’s little value in debating such claims. The studies are inconclusive. What we need to do now is determine what real changes have taken place that actually affect searches.

Social Factors That Impact SEO

Keep in mind that SEO is alive and well. Yet along with the continued impact of SEO is the increasing dependence upon social for how people search, find, and respond to information. Here are the major factors that are forming this social search trend.

1.    Personalized search results.

By default, Google returns results that are most relevant to you personally, assuming you are logged in to a Google account. If you look in the upper right corner of your search results page, here’s what you’ll see: ajmalseotips.blogspot.com