Traditional SEO to Social, What Matters?

Have you ever wondered how Twitter links and updates play into search results? A recent study by Michael Stelzner on small business social media use reported, 88% of all marketers found social media helps get them increase exposure. But where is this exposure coming from? Search? Bookmarking? Social Sharing? As marketers and business professionals, we’ve all heard how great social media is for brand awareness, but what effect does social sharing on Twitter have on search indexing?

Traditionally SEO was a clear cut process. You could change your web page, resubmit this information to Google, and a day later you would be ranking better. A link placed on another site directed to your site gave you value (appearing in search) if it was “SEO friendly.” To help you understand how fragmented the SEO landscape is, lets say a college textbook was written exclusively on SEO, it would likely only have about 4 key chapters:

Website Structure
Keyword Research
Link Building
Best Practices

Fortunately most SEO information is written on the web; because if it was print based , the information would have to be re-written just about every month. Social media would fall under a philosophy subsection because relatively little is known about social and search; but as their relationship grows it’s becoming evident that the social media and search are bonding. We have speculated its validity before, but now we are seeing small samples of how sharing, specifically through Twitter with URL shortened links work to positively impact SEO rankings.


So, whether you are a traditionalist SEO expert or a new wave social media guru, it seems that both of your skills are relevant in search. Traditional link building is still important, but it seems that social link building on Twitter may be just as relevant. Be sure to incorporate elements of social in your SEO strategy and elements of SEO in your social strategy.

Image Credit: Ross Social





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