Social Media Marketing focus and priorities for SEO

[McTaggart]

Hello Mozzers,

I'm looking at Social Media Marketing and wondering what counts for most in terms of SEO - (A) shares and likes from specific web pages, or (B) followers, likes, etc., on social media profile pages? What does Google measure vis-a-vis your website?

Also, regarding Twitter, if a twitterer forwards on a tweet manually (by inserting RT) - and his RT is then shared, does that count for anything, or is it better for clients if RTweeters simply press the RT button.

And should I include URLs in tweets, facebook posts, etc? And do backlinks help beyond increasing website visitor numbers - do any of the social media marketing tools pass juice back to websites via backlinks? Thanks in advance :), Luke

[JaspalX]

You're welcome Luke.

Not seen any testing about the importance of those counters with respect to Google. I'm not sure they would have an effect...if Google can find the links in tweets etc. I don't think it would need to 'check' what a page says/claims the number of tweets is too.

I see those counters as more of a signal to human visitors...the 'implicit message of 100 tweets on a counter is: 'hey this is great, it got a hundred tweets, you should read it!'

[McTaggart]

Great answer jassy - and thanks for the links.

I suppose I was trying to work out how you Google is figuring out which of my web pages are actually being interacted with. How it measures that, takes it into account. I was assuming through links to those pages, and you've confirmed that.

Another thing I've been wondering about is whether those facebook, Google plus and twitter counters you see on websites - are they being used to provide an 'interaction' / 'importance' signal to Google in a clearer way?

[JaspalX]

Hi Luke, there are a few posts on the blog that might help.

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/tracking-the-roi-of-social-media and http://www.seomoz.org/blog/facebook-twitters-influence-google-search-rankings

I think the consensus is that social shares (by that I mean tweets, likes, facebook shares, +1s) do affect rankings.

If I understand the question correctly, A is the relevant thing here - social signals relating to the pages that you want to rank.

B - If we treat the number/quality of followers etc. as the 'social authority' (who said klout?) of your social media accounts then I believe (don't recall seeing any data) that social shares from high 'social authority' accounts will be more influential for ranking than others.

So, yes, put URLs in your tweets (probably want to use a shortener that gives you some metrics e.g. bit.ly)

Most links in social channels (and I'm thinking of fb and Twitter here), are no follow.

I do wonder, if another way of looking at it might be: I want quality traffic that converts...links can help with that, so can social media (i.e. even if you get no ranking boost from social media, if it brings you the right traffic  then that's a good thing right?)