If your search engine rankings are going down and your rank based on keywords is fluctuating, that is probably because you haven’t noticed that Google has updated its search algorithm with up to 50 major changes, Google Panda 3.4.

In an effort from Google to combat “black hat” link building strategies and poor quality websites, Google Panda 3.4 was designed to penalise over-optimised sites. Some of the changes this implements are the following;

Reduced anchor-link text match, which was designed to combat the over-usage of keywords as a part of keyword strategies. The accepted keyword match is now 5-10% as opposed to the previous 40%. This is made in an effort to motivate businesses and websites to create more genuine link building and to integrate a more varied range of keywords into the content.

The removal of Link Evaluation Signal

Google emphasises, through making these changes, social media presence and social media links, which now affects website rankings. Your place on the search engine rankings now depends on how popular you are on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Youtube, and Pinterest.

Moreover, Google Analytics has been elaborated to include Social Analytics. The impact of the social initiatives has been defined by four elements.

Sources – highlights the ways in which visitors from multiple social platforms engage.

Conversations – measuring the conversation rates and the number of times the URL has been shared will help you determine the impact of social media on your business.

Pages – this tool monitors how and where the pages are being shared, as well as how the audience engages with them.

Social Plugins – this illustrates, from your side directly, how your content is being shared through social buttons.

The analytics’ social reports provide you with an overview of the ROI that your social media channels generate.

The analytics’ social reports provide you with an overview of the ROI that your social media channels generate.

More reports such as the following will provide you with a more in-depth insight;

1.      Page Engagement for each URL will help you identify the viral content

2.      The conversions include Assisted Conversions, Assisted Conversion Value, Last Interaction Conversions, Last Interaction Conversion Value, Assisted Last Interaction Conversion Value and Assisted/Last Interaction Conversions, allowing you to quantify the value of your social media activities.

3.      Social Plugins report show the content that is commonly shared by social media buttons directly from the website.

4.      Social Visitors, which is most helpful when running promotional campaigns on social media sites, shows the way the visitors take from the social network to your website. It also shows the social network that generated more of visitors.

In addition, social data hub partner network that is initiated by Google allows you to measure the URL sharing by partner networks and the activity stream.

The initiation of Google Panda 3.4 indicated that Google is actively integrating social media elements into its search algorithm. This along with all the other changes illustrates how importance social media has become as a serious channel for search engine optimisation and generating traffic.

Edited by: Yasmin Helal