How Social Media Can Impact on Search Results

Likes from Google+ and Facebook :

The likes that you get from Google+ and from Facebook are all good for helping a website rank higher in the search engine results page. If your web page has the Google+ and Facebook “Like” widget, then more and more “Like” will increase its rank in the search engine results pages.

This is true so long as the search engine does not notice that many of the “likes” are coming from the same IP address. They are aware that people may set up lots of Facebook or Google+ profiles so that they may insert lots of “likes” into one page. The search engines know that people do this, and so will ignore the “like” from those cloned (for want of a better word) profiles.

Your Tweets and their Re-Tweets :

Tweets are not very powerful SEO affecters unless they have one of two things, either a link in them or a certain branded name or website reference. If the Tweet is re-Tweeted a number of times, then the search engines will pay more attention to them. However, the affect on your websites search engine friendly status is rather small. It may however have a mildly positive effect on your domain authority.

The affect of a Fan Page on the results :

The Fan Page may actually appear on the search engine results. Therefore it is one of the few social media sites that will appear directly on the search engine results. So, its first affect on the results is its appearance on there. Its second effect is that it has a positive SEO effect on the website that the Fan Page is all about (and linked to). A well maintained and heavily attended Facebook Fan Page is going to give a reasonably good SEO benefit to the linked site.

The affect of links from social media to other websites :

A link from one social media site to a website is going to have a negligible effect on its own. However, if these links are coupled with a well optimized website, then they are going to have a positive effect. Their positive effect comes more from the drag factor of their absence. In other words, a well optimized website that does not have a few social media links pointing to it, will not rise up the search engine results as quickly as it would have otherwise done.

Having your videos on YouTube and linking/embedding them to your site :

For a starter you will notice that YouTube videos are a common occurrence on the Google search engine results, as are images. Both images and YouTube videos also have their own search engines within the Google website. So, the first effect that the YouTube social media site has on search engines is the fact that it is possible to have pages of Google search results that are heavily populated with YouTube videos.

YouTube videos are uploaded by people with YouTube profiles. These profiles are able to link to a website. This website may receive a small SEO benefit from this. A website may also receive an SEO benefit if it embeds a popular YouTube video into its page. The video may appear on the search engine results, which will then drive traffic to the embedded site. In an indirect way, this means that your website is getting listed on the Google search results too.

The authors who have Google+ circles and Google+ authorship :

You will notice that people who have signed up for Google authorship in Google+ will have their faces appear next to their articles that appear on the search engine results. This is the first and most obvious way that Google+ affects the search engine results.

The authors may also have circles, which is a concept that allows people to see the other works that the author has published online. This also affects the search engine results, especially if the writer is of a high quality and prolific, as his or her text will be ranked higher up the search engine results pages as a consequence.