Google: search, social media marketing, and collateral damage
Even marketers less than au fait with search-engine small print should tune into the below, in which Google’s head of webspam and chief SEO liaison Matt Cutts recommends three strategic priorities for SEOs in 2011: site speed, internal linking, and social media marketing.
Cutts’ arguments for social media activity are particularly interesting. Such outreach can help search rankings, he says, because conversations about your content on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, et al, might prompt someone to link to that content. This position suggests that social media signals in and of themselves are not as important an ingredient an Google’s algorithm as he himself suggested at the end of last year – not yet, at least.
These kinds of SEO arguments can seem like algorithmic nitpicking. But even the most fervent believer in the relative importance of social media will readily concede that search engines will remain key internet resources for some time to come. And as Aaron Wall‘s graphic below shows, Google’s view on any aspect of online activity can have serious consequences.
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