Today, I performed a really simple test to see if Likes from social media type websites could contribute to a top search engine ranking in the search engines. Granted, there are a lot of various factors here to take into account–but after analyzing the results, it appears that social media “likes” contribute a lot when it comes to search engine rankings.
So, what did I do to set up and prove my theory that social media likes contributes to search engine rankings? I registered a brand new domain name, put up a very simple web page on it, and used a few social media websites to “like” the site. The results? Within 2 hours the domain name was crawled, indexed, and ranks in the top 5 for its main keyword phrase.
These results just goes to show you that it is “worth it” to pay attention to social media and include social media in your overall website marketing plan. Not only is social media marketing good for marketing your products and services, it can help your search engine optimization, as well. So, let’s take a look at the experiment and some specifics.
The Experiment
This morning, I registered a brand new keyword rich domain name, www.DoYouLikeThisDomain.com. Using Notepad, a simple text editor, I used my html coding skills to put together a very simple web page. As you can see on the website, it literally is as simple as you can get. And yes, I am using some pretty basic Search Engine Optimization Best Practices. A keyword rich domain name, a keyword phase in the title tag, as well as a keyword phrase in the H1 tag on the page. I added one simple phrase of content on the page.
I then added three different “social sharing” options: the Google+ button, a Facebook “Like” button, and the Tweet button. Nothing else.
Once I added the code, I then added a footer link back to the home page on the site.
After logging into Google+, Facebook, and Twitter, I returned to the site and “liked” the page using the buttons on the page. I also used a few other social bookmarking websites (about five of them) and social bookmarked the site using a title, description, and tags. No other “manual” or “traditional-style” links were used other than these social sharing and social bookmarks.
The Results
I monitored the results, watching to see how long it would take Google and Bing.com to crawl and index the site. I am happy to report that Google has the site indexed within 2 hours, and the site ranks in the top 5 for its main keyword phrase, “Do you like this domain”. Granted, there are a few factors at play here, including the social bookmarks. But the social sharing (Google Plus and Facebook) is new.
From what I can tell, it appears that social media really DOES help your search engine rankings. And not only can it help you get a top ranking at Google, it can do it fairly quickly.