There's a lot of noise being generated around the industry forums these days about the new link building now being forged from social media content sharing by avid consumers on a fast evolving web 3.0. Social signals, undoubtedly, figure among today's key indicators of site authority, and site owners are coming to recognise that they must participate in the process.
It's unfortunate that there will be many who will attempt to simply cheat the system for short-term gain in ranking. By trying to purchase social followers and using auto software for tweeting and spinning blog and article content, a familiar mindset continues to undermine the efforts of the Google algorithm to differentiate between genuine search and social signals and the spammers.
As a result, some business owners who simply look at rankingas the be-all and end-all to their online presence are prepared to claw their way up by any means necessary! Especially, if other sites are seen to rise to a top three position on page one by less than purely 'organic' marketing strategies.
But in the an era where social networking now runs alongside traditional online marketing, a credible and trusted presence must be 'earned' and ranking has to be seen to be justified. No less by Google algorithms as well as human audiences. It should never be forgotten that algorithms are programmed according to carefully analysed data collected by 'human' evaluators. As coding technology improves, so too the ability for robots to behave with increased human response.
In other words, words are worth more than ever before - not just in their link building role as SEO keywords but in their intrinsic value as relevant, meaningful content, most specifically in the social media spaces. Social networking aims to break down communication barriers. By sharing content and creating links at customer touchpoints an unique quality of engagement can be created with both new and pre-qualified audiences willing to act as social advocates.
According to both Google and Bing, for example, " a link is calculated to carry more weight depending on the person who tweets it", and especially in the 'Top links' section of Google Realtime Search. It's as clear a statement as any as to the importance of the key qualities of credibility, trust and authority which now govern social signals and their influence over SERPS ranking.
Both humans and robots are becoming better equipped than ever to detect the auto spammers and unnatural link cheats, especially on the social networks, where natural conversation is the natural order!
As are the regular contributors, who are slowly building their social linking presence and trusted participation.
It's the natural order of the search and social enterprise.
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