In our last post we commented on how Google’s recent Penguin update had focussed on link quality, content quality and how having poor quality links pointing to your website probably means that you have suffered in terms of SEO as a result of this algorithm change.

In this post we are going to look at the second critical success factor which is for your site to have a strong presence on the social media sites.  Google is now placing a higher weighting on ‘social signals’ which can be defined as the buzz on the social networks about your business or your products.

The Penguin update means that if your site relies on traditional links and has no presence at all in the social networks you are highly unlikely to be able to compete in the search results with the sites of your competitors that have social signals.

If none of your competitors have social signals either, this may not be a problem for you but if you are in a really competitive sector, trying to get a high ranking for very competitive keywords, having a strong social presence will help you to convince Google that your pages should be ranked higher than those of your competitors.

The increased weighting given to social media will of course help the big authority sites such as Amazon.co.uk who get many Facebook likes and Google+ likes and many mentions across the whole of Web 2.0.  It can help smaller businesses too!

Blogs continue to be an excellent way for you to build links but now it is important for you to try posting on different blogs as well as your own, i.e. guest blogging and we would suggest that you try and vary your link text from time to time.

Links created in good quality relevant content are still the best kind of links and still carry by far the largest weighting in Google’s algorithm.

Link building allied to the production of great quality content along with a strong social presence is definitely the way forward in terms of organic search engine optimisation.

Here at WSI IMS we offer a comprehensive range of quality link building plans, all allied to content production and submission and we have plans to meet all budgets.  We also offer a range of social media management plans so if you would like to ensure the continued success of your business online, please leave a comment below or if preferred use the contact form.