Earlier on this month, both Bing and Google finally confirmed what many in the SEO industry have been suspecting for some time – that your social media presence does indeed have an effect on where you rank in their search engines.

It makes sense, of course. Let’s not forget that the fundamental aim of Google and Bing is to deliver relevant and high quality results to users searching for specific keywords or phrases. How it decides what is relevant and high quality comes down to your website itself and then how your Internet is viewed on the website as a whole. So it’s fair to say that if literally thousands of people are discussing a topic and linking to your site, that it’s relevant to your site and therefore makes sense that it would influence the ranking in search engines.

So what does that mean in real terms? Well, essentially, it means a really rounded approach is essential in Internet Marketing now and this simply has to encompass the use of the major social media platforms and should involve engaging with other social media users on these sites and the wider blogosphere.

You can read the full interview in which the effects of social media on the ranking algorithms were discussed here.

We all use search engines. In fact, in many ways we take them for granted. I, for one, will always hit Google if I’m looking for pretty much anything and don’t have a retailer in mind. I book holidays via companies I find in search engines, buy travel insurance and even do my Christmas shopping that way. I’m not alone.

There are in fact 34,000 Google searches every second (as of October 2010). That equates to 3 billion a day or 90 billion a month. Of those 90 billion, more than 5 come from the UK alone. That equates to a whole lot of people searching for a whole lot of things. And people certainly spend on what they find. In 2009, £4.46 trillion was spent globally online as the result of a search engine search.

Enhancing your search engine placement for relevant keywords means you make yourself visible to the people already looking for your products and services. Let’s say you run a Florist business. If someone types into Google, “buy flowers,” there’s a really good chance they are looking for your products and services. And there’s also a massive chance that they will click on a website on the first page of the Google results (the nearer to the top of the page, the most people click). So your search engine placement is essential in helping your potential customers to find you.

Can I Change My Search Engine Placement?

Yes! You can carry out work that will improve your search engine placement. This work is called SEO or search engine optimisation. It makes improvements to your website, as well as the way your website is perceived on the Internet as a whole, to enhance rankings in search engines for relevant keywords.

SEO should:-

• Identify the right keywords – balancing relevance with the volume of people who search the keyword each month and the likelihood that those people will submit and enquiry or make a purchase.

• This should in turn lead to more people visiting your site. Specifically, these will be people actively looking for your products or services.

• In turn, this will result in more sales or enquiries, thus revenue, the ultimate aim being to achieve a healthy ROI on your SEO campaign.