A similar study in June 2010 showed that .com domains with exact match addresses and the number of linking domains had the biggest impact on the results. Now, as of late March 2011, the Facebook 'share' appears to have the biggest impact on the rankings, outranking even Twitter in the impact it has on the results. The study has the following takeaways:
1 - Social Signals Appear To Correlate Well With Strong Rankings
Pages which earn a large number of tweets and shares correlate well with earning links, and send direct traffic on their own.
2 - The Testing Of Facebook Shares Is an Urgent Matter
The impact of a viral Tweet has been well established, it is imperative to test this with Facebook link shares.
3 - New Strategies Are Required To Achieve Facebook Shares
Shares are not easy to come by, and some brainstorming is required to find new ways of getting people to share your link
4 - Shares Appear More Valuable Than Likes
A like on a link will appear on a user’s wall, whereas a share is much more likely to be in the 'Top News' landing page of a user’s friends and family. This should, in theory, allow more people to view and then share your link.
5 - Twitter Might Not Be As Powerful As Previously Thought
The data showed that the presence of tweets in the rankings was, compared to Facebook, a lot less than anticipated. This requires further analysis and testing.
The full report can be found here, this article was by EQTR SEO, Glasgow.
