Pubcon Las Vegas 2012 - Social Signals on Search, presented by Rob Garner

Social Media Signals That Influence Search

October 16, 2012

iCrossing - Agency services

with clients including…

Search and Social: The Definitive Guide to Real-Time Content Marketing

• Covers interdependent search and social concepts

• Social signals on search

• Interview with Brett Tabke and many others

• Ships Nov. 6

• 406 pages

4Copyright iCrossing - Proprietary and Confidential

Overview

• Why social signals are important to search

• Why search is a strategic component of social

• Google+ social signals and the Author Graph

• A list of social signals, and what signals engine pick up on


Why are Social Signals Important to Search?

Shift in Linking Measurement: Social impact on SEO

• Links are the cornerstones of natural search algorithms, and now social is a cornerstone as well

• But influence of links has shifted greatly from webmasters and technical influencers, to the average Internet user

• As a result, the social graph has taken a massive bite out of the link graph

• Examples of this include:• Tweeting (not a direct link)• Publishing via blog CMS such as

WordPress or Blogger• Rating, commenting, posting• +1s, Likes, various types of shares• Bookmarking• Etc.


The Share Graph: A new kind of social link graph

• Search engine’s view of sharing activities across the social graph

• Takes into consideration

• Authority of the network sharer• Theme of the user, or related concepts of the network sharer• Depth of the network sharer’s network, and the authority of those in the

network• Trustworthiness of the network sharer (in relation to the likelihood that they

produce spam or low-quality content• Velocity of keyword usage across a network, and the spreading of that

keyword or phrase over time though shared networks• Velocity of link being shared, over time, based on time frequency, volume,

and level that it cascades though various networks

• The link graph is to the web graph, as the share graph is to the social graph


Social Signals Also Reveal High Velocity Content and Interests

• Keyword search velocity: Google trends the rise and fall of keyword usage over time

• Sharing: Google+ is tracking the speed of traffic by time-stamping every click

• This helps determine “QDF” factors (“query deserves freshness”), and rank sites accordingly

Natural Language Signals Connect Social and Search

• Language is a living concept

• Keywords are connections to people

• Language reflects the words, voice, tone, and tastes of audience

• Used to find and connect with your audience through content and conversation

• Enables of the spirit of your audience into brand of business conversation

• Social marketers take note - Search engines have historically been the best at mining and processing natural language

Why Search is a Strategic Component of Social

Search engines perform deep network analysis

• Search engines perform intricate network analysis (analysis of the entire Web, and the weighted connections in between, among many other factors)

• This same type of network analysis is being used as a framework for identifying connections in social networks

• Network analysis can help the social user experience by understanding themes and the influence of people within a network, among many other areas


Search helps social marketers find their audience

• Companies should value their audience no matter where they may congregate

• The social Web extends to answer sites and discussion boards, among many other places

• When marketers use deep keyword research and look far to find their audience in these places, they are better able to serve their audience


Search data provides market research and show your audience’s tastes

• Search engine data is like a living focus group for a social or content audience

• Using other search tools like Think With Google or Google Ad Planner, marketers can let a search engine’s network analysis do much of the heavy lifting

• Search tools help marketers better understand what their audience wants, and how and where they want it.


Search metrics reflect content performance

• Backlinks unique indexed pages, and network analysis of your owned assets are a reflection of your own content’s performance

• Don’t just look at SEO metrics in a search context, but in a social and content context as well


Social networks are becoming more algorithmic

• The biggest updates coming up in Twitter and Facebook are algorithmic, and will affect how you get your information

• Showing the “most recent info first” is a fairly simple algorithm

• As social networks become more algorithmic, social marketers will increasingly find themselves trying to reverse-engineer the social algorithms just as search marketers do

• “Reverse engineering” is not a bad term; it just means that you want to exercise more control over how your information appears, as you have a right to do


Social Signals in Google+

Yes, +1s can be used as a search signal

Google states that +1s from people in your network can be a “useful signal” to help determine the relevance of a search query.

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1140194


For Search Signals, +1s are Measured Within Context of the Query

• When you +1 a result in Google search, Google captures the query you used to find that result and adds the context of that keyword to your annotation

• This attribution of keyword phrase context is similar to the way search engines apply the context of anchor text to a link


Search query context: “cool SEO conference”

Share context: “search industry” and “social” circles

Circles: Increased network size is an SEO tactic

• Personalization features like +1s appear only to those in a networks

• Your company presence becomes more prominent within the SERPs of those who have circled you

• Tremendous first mover advantage• Many companies slow to embrace Google+

• Build up your network• Circle people who are relevant to you• Invite people• Circle those who share or publish content in Google+ that corresponds with

the main theme of your business


Circles

• Label your circles accordingly

• Remember that your Google+ stream is only as good as the people you choose to circle


The Author Graph

• Measures influence, authority, and theme, just the way Google measures other digital assets

• Your influence is reflected by the quality and theme of the publications you write for, and by the relative social signals for those properties


Publishers: Get a Google Badge

• Google Badge is a way to connect your website directly to your Google profile

• Google “strongly recommends” that webmasters make this connection.

• Google also refers to it as an “enhanced version of the +1 button”

• In effect, it creates a sort of handshake between your main web asset and your Google+ presence and verifies your web presence with Google as a publisher

• Read more about Google Badges at https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/badge/config.


Selected list of social signals and synergies


Key social signals in Bing and Google (Eric Enge)


Thank You


Pubcon Las Vegas 2012 - Social Signals on Search, presented by Rob Garner

Business

Transcript of Pubcon Las Vegas 2012 - Social Signals on Search, presented by Rob Garner