Research Project: Third Artefact - Social Media Integration

In my 3rd artefact I will be looking at the impact of social media integration on Google search results. By social media integration I mean individual Facebook, Twitter and Google + pages as well as buttons on the website which allow sharing of the site on these three platforms. I have also created a Twitter feed on the home page of the test site. Below you will see an image of the bottom of the home page which includes social media page links, Facebook share/like buttons, Tweet button and Google plus one button; the twitter feed is on the right of the image.

I have read that building links through social media in the form of likes, shares, tweets etc can increase the visibility of a website and therefore raise the position in search results. According to this source social metrics have a 7.24% impact on ranking factors in Google.

I wanted to put this to the test so I checked the position in Google for my selected keywords before and after the social media integration. Here are my results:

before (on 12/01/2014):

mexican food in sheffield - no listing
burrito bar sheffield - page 2, position 6
burrito sheffield - page 4, position 3
buckin' burrito - page 2, position 3 

after (on 21/01/2014):

mexican food in sheffield - no listing
burrito bar sheffield - page 2, position 5
burrito sheffield - page 4, position 8
buckin' burrito - page 2, position 3 

As you can see there was very little positive movement in Google and in fact one of my keywords had gone down 5 positions. During my test period there were 42 likes on Facebook but only one share through each social platform; if there had been a bigger social engagement and over a longer period I believe the Google positions would have changed more. Social networking is one of the never-ending factors in SEO so I would encourage my client to continue promoting the business this way to see higher rankings in Google.

I have read that the social networks have their own meta tags such as open graph and Twitter cards. In my fourth artefact I will look at how implementing the new meta tags will help build visibility on social networks and if this will affect the ranking in Google.