My presentation on the Search and Social panel at Pubcon Las Vegas, 2012.

1. Social Media Signals That Influence Search
October 16, 2012

2. iCrossing - Agency services

3. with clients including…

4. 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
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5. 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
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6. Why are Social Signals Important to
Search?

7. 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.
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8. 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
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9. 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

10. 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

11. Why Search is a Strategic Component of
Social

12. 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
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13. 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
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14. 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.
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15. 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
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16. 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
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17. Social Signals in Google+

18. 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
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19. For Search Signals, +1s are Measured Within
Context of the Query Search query context: “cool SEO conference”
• 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
Share context:
“search industry”
and “social” circles
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20. 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
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21. Circles
• Label your
circles
accordingly
• Remember
that your
Google+
stream is only
as good as the
people you
choose to
circle
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22. 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
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25. 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
.
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26. Selected list of social signals and synergies
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27. Key social signals in Bing and Google (Eric Enge)
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28. Thank You
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