What Is Social Networking Coming To? It’s All About The Social Vote!

Your “Vote” does count, more than ever these days. The Social Vote, or Social Signal as it has come to be known, is quickly replacing the backlink…

If you’re a network marketer trying to get your internet marketing business off the ground, or a seasoned veteran, the “Social Vote” is changing the landscape and you must know about these changes…

Times are changing, and if there is one thing you can count on, other than taxes and death, it’s Google’s quest to put forth the most original and valuable content first.

When the Google Panda Update hit in 2011, 12% to 15% of the websites online were affected and thousands of sites reported their sites and backlinks had been de-indexed.

Google’s reasoning was to minimize backlink spamming. I’m not saying that backlinking isn’t going to be a consideration going forward, it just won’t carry the weight it once did.

High Quality PR (page rank) rated sites will still be smiled upon by Google. It’s the not so ethical methods of gaining low quality backlinks that is dying. Many popular link building services have closed their doors since the Panda Update took effect.

The days of creating several Social networking accounts under different names, or fake accounts, with sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit etc. to give yourself extra link juice isn’t going to hold water anymore.

Apparently the benefits of social sharing will be judged by the authority of users, and how active they are in sharing. The more influence those users have, the more weight their share will carry.  So it will do little good to create fake accounts and only share every now and again.

Google, Bing and other search engines are all looking at the “Social Vote”.

Social bookmarking cannot be ignored by the search engines these days because real humans are reading it, determining it’s value, and taking the time to let the world know what they think.

It’s increasingly more important for your content to be shared on sites like, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Digg, Google+, Facebook, Twitter Re-Tweets, etc. by authoritative sites.

Something else to consider if you’ve been holding out is creating a Google+ account.

Google loves all things Google and tends to place more weight on them. YouTube is a perfect example. I suggest opening an account and start placing the Google+ button on your site so people can share your content that way.

There is even an Apple App you can download for your mobile device so you can keep connected while on the go.

I’ve posted a previous article titled, The Google Social Networking Site, Are You In?

While were at it, and to impress upon you the importance of the “Social Vote/Social Signal”, take a look at Google’s next move.

Author information or Authorship Markup which can be found in the WebMaster Tools section on Google’s site.

Another one of Google’s biggest challenges has been determining who wrote what first… Original content if you will. Authorship markup is going to make it much easier for Google to deal with duplicate content, something they despise.

“Google is piloting the display of author information in search results to help users discover great content.”

If you want your authorship info to appear in the search results as above for the content you create, you’ll need to create that Google+ profile I mentioned earlier. Along with that you will need a widget on your site of the Google+ logo which links back to your Google+ profile.

In addition, make sure your web domain is listed in your  g+profile and the final step that Joe Shaw alerted me to is… Be sure and make your Google+ Circles public. Google needs to see everything linking back to a real person.

Here’s the blow by blow process of linking your content to your Google+ profile and with any luck, getting your authorship info to appear in the search result.  I say luck because Google doesn’t guarantee this info will show up.  I linked my info yesterday, and 24 hours later it’s still doesn’t appear.

Google Plus won’t be alone in implementing Author Markup or Author Reputation either. Soon author reputation will show up on Twitter and Facebook as well. There are other websites like Klout and PeerIndex that have been around and measuring the social influence for a while.

In closing:

To stay ahead of the new backlinking trend you can see the importance of the Social Signal. In order to do just that, I suggest you zero in on creating quality content, make sure your site is optimized for the user experience – meaning your site isn’t loaded with ads and other junk all over the place, and be aware of your websites load time. Google really hates websites that load slowly, just as you and I do.

Don’t forget to make Google aware of your authorship markup so they know you are the owner and author of that original content.

I’ve read that even Pinterest and “Pins” will have an effect on your social standing so get out there and get connected to as many social networking sites as possible because down the road, the social vote will replace the backlink.

My Call To Action today is simple.

If you found value in this post, and I hope you did… Please take a moment and place your Vote. It will do us both good. 🙂    

Richard Petrillo,
email me: richard@richardpetrillo.com

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