Social sharing closely matches SEO

New York—Facebook and Twitter link sharing is closely correlated with how prominently a website ranks in Google search results, according to a study by search analytics software company Searchmetrics Inc.

According to “Social Media, Backlinks and Classic SEO,” too many paid search ads were seen as harming organic search results, in keeping with a Google algorithmic change this year that sought to return relevant answers to queries. In addition, inbound links are still important to Google SEO visibility, but the study found that inbound links must appear to be “natural,” rather than having been created by SEO experts.

Searchmetrics' study was based on an analysis of 10,000 keywords searched on Google and their impact on 300,000 websites in determining issues that correlate with a high Google ranking.