Thursday, June 9, 2011

AboutUs Weblog

AboutUs Weblog

SEO Nuggets for Small Business from SMX

Posted: 08 Jun 2011 10:00 AM PDT

I’m at SMX Advanced this week, a conference that brings together the leading thinkers and practitioners of search engine marketing. There’s no way I can share everything I’ve learned – nor even every note I’ve taken. But a few things so far stand out as relevant and important for small business owners. Here’s the first installment.

Raging Controversy: Does Google See Facebook Shares?

This argument started yesterday, not so much during the actual session as in the simultaneous Twitter “session” accompanying every presentation and panel.

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz – a Seattle company providing professional SEO tools – ignited the Twitterstorm by showing that web links getting a high number of Facebook shares also rank well in Google search results. He was careful to point out that the relationship was one of correlation, not causation, but that distinction didn’t fully register on everyone.

Then Matt Cutts, head of Google’s webspam team, said that Google doesn’t crawl Facebook shares – in fact, doesn’t have access to them. Well, maybe Google doesn’t actually crawl shares on people’s own pages, but the shares certainly do show up in Google results, as Rand subsequently showed. (There’s a great, if complex, recap of the whole issue on Search Engine Land, written by sleep-eschewing Danny Sullivan.)

What does this mean for small business owners trying to rank better in search results? Basically, it means that good content gets shared. If you’re producing blog posts and videos, but no one is sharing them on Facebook, then either 1) you haven’t installed a Facebook sharing button on your content pages, or 2) your content isn’t compelling anyone to share.

Remember, great content gets linked to, and links help you gain new website visitors. Publish interesting stuff on your site – and on YouTube and other sites – install Facebook and Twitter sharing buttons, and you’ll get more website visitors.

 

 

 

 
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