Social signals: Twitter, Facebook and Google+

We’ve been told for awhile now that social media is an important frontier and one that we shouldn’t ignore. We’ve been told we need a blog and we need to be on Twitter, Facebook and so on.

It used to be that we needed to do this because people everywhere are using social media and trusting it more than ever. Here’s another reason why it’s gotten even more important: Google themselves have officially said that social media is being used as trustworthy signals of good content.

Links to articles, retweets on Twitter and sharing done by large numbers of people is actually being counted towards a website’s authority in Google’s algorithm.

So what should we do about this?

Firstly, you need to make it easy for people to share your content. Get your developer to put up Twitter tweet buttons, Facebook like buttons and Google +1 buttons on product pages and key landing pages.

Secondly, make sure you have a good healthy presence on Twitter and Facebook, and like to these pages through links in the footer of your website. Engage with people in discussions relevant to your business niche and if relevant, plug your business! There’s nothing quite like a shameless plug that’s relevant.