As you may well know, very recently there was a major shift in the Google Algorithm. In the SEO community the impact has been huge. Some have gained and some have lost, but all have watched nervously as the drama unfolded.
One of the most significant developments has been the unquestionable favour attached to any form of social media integration. While the Google Caffeine update last year certainly made blogging a more rewarding habit, with pages being indexed in minutes rather than weeks, that change was nothing compared to this from a pure SEO perspective. It is now speculated that Google have added signals to measure the impact that the Twitter links, LinkedIn company profiles and Facebook likes can have on a websites’ rankings.
So, for example, if I’m trying to rank an internet marketing company in Leicester, England, for the search term search engine optimisation Leicester, and I send out frequent tweets with links back to the landing page of the website in question, then that can aid my ranking process in the same way that traditional links from web pages and blog posts have been able to.
Likewise if I were to link from a Facebook Fan Page to a website then there is wide belief that it could aid my ability to rank, particularly if it were the exact match keywords Search Engine Optimisation Leicester. However, as with traditional links, the authority and reputation of the source is important. A Twitter profile with high klout or a fan page with tens of thousands of fans would have significantly more impact upon rankings than simply a low quality, unpopular equivalent.