Why Social Media? Because it will Help You Be Found.

The third reason why you must include social media in your marketing toolkit is that it will help you be found online. The web is a crowded place. If you look at the number of .com, .net, .org, .info, and .biz domains (the six most popular US TLDs), you will see that there are roughly 147,896,308 registered websites. Now if you look at international numbers, it is estimated the number could exceed 400 million. How do you get seen in this massive web of information? Most likely through searches on search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo.

The question then becomes how do you become friends with these search engines. SearchMetrics, a leading search analytics software company, annually produces a study of the factors that most influence a websites placement in the Google search engine results pages. Seven of the top eight are related to social media.

Here are the top factors:

1. Google +1’s – The +1 is Google’s Like button. Get people to like your site within Google/Plus and you will see dramatic increases in your positioning in the Google search engine results pages (SERPs).
2. Facebook Shares – Everytime your friends, fans and followers share your web links on Facebook, Google likes you just a little bit more.
3. Number of Backlinks – Not social but very important.
4. Facebook Total – The number of fans and activity on Facebook makes up this factor. The more people who engage in your Facebook presence dramatically impacts your SERP placement
5. Facebook Comments – When users comment about your content, you will see an increase in your positioning.
6. Facebook Likes – The more times people click on “Like” for specific pieces of content is the final Facebook metric in this study. But it is a big factor in SEO.
7. PInterest – This is a new factor in SERPs but with an increase in PInterest popularity and the process of “Pinning,” this is a new very important factor in increasing your visibility online.
8. Tweets – If you get on Twitter and tweet regularly about your content and link back to the content, your content will be found more often by search engines.

The graph below (courtesy of SearchMetrics) gives you a full picture of the different factors that impact your presence on Google and other search engines.

So the moral of the story… social media helps you be found online in a gigantic web of information. Adopt social media as a key marketing tool and you will see a dramatic change in your search engine positioning.