"So what exactly is social authority?", is the inevitable question asked by site owners. Often a first close look might suggest that the biggest winners at social media just happen to already be the most well-known global brands and celebrities.
But being a high profile public name has always tended to draw more media attention and it's obvious that they are likely to attract many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of followers.
Despite the likes of Britney Spears, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, not to mention Stephen Fry, having all been cited for a mind boggling number of followers, it does not necessarily mean that the Google algorithm assigns greater weight and influence to social signals based upon a simple numerical count of network activity.
In the current debate over a website's authority being increasingly determined by Google according to 'social signals', it's important to understand the inherent task of the algorithm. As with all genuine online marketing and link building campaigns, first and foremost, rating is based upon relevance and value to the criteria of the search query.
This means that Google is always concerned to rate how others regard a site and value its web /social presence. Earning credibility is, therefore, not necessarily based solely upon a number count. The search and social dimension and the creation of site authority does not merely comprise the accumulation of 'likes',' tweets', 'RTs', 'plus ones' and 'YouTube' views.
The temptation to cheat Google rankings by playing the 'numbers game' is always shortsighted as it is inevitably, short term. In fact, the easier it becomes to manipulate the rankings, for example, by SEO keyword stuffing and spam linking, Google soon catches up and rankings drop.
Increasingly, the semantic nature of search and social across the busy and noisy multichannel has meant that algorithms are constantly updating and, ultimately, refining the basic premise of relevant search.
Yet we see some brands attempting to drive up their social signals by a traditional marketing strategies mindset. From deploying the use of contests, sponsored stories, and CPC ads to auto tweeting / blog comments and fake forum interventions, etc. The absence of any understanding of building trust and credibility as per the social signals of human engagement are readily recognised and mostly ignored.
While some business owners might believe that social media is just useful for gaining influence with Google ranking, based upon attracting links from social followers, the reality is that Google is focused on the sharing of quality content by quality sites as the foremost signal.
Following in the footsteps of Facebook, the principle of recognising and delivering personal social experience by indexing frequent and relevant engagement with people, brands and information is the web and increasingly defines ranking by social authority.
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