In a recent Google Webmaster Help video (see below), Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam Team answers one of the most popular questions that many websites have and that is “Does Google use Twitter and Facebook Links as a ranking signal?”  The definitive answer, from Matt is “Yes”.

To be honest, this rather surprised me because rarely have I ever heard Matt answer a question with such forthright authority.  Usually the answer is more along the lines of “Yes, but…” with all kinds of subjective material added to the answer; making it virtually impossible to detect if what you’re doing yourself actually matters at all.

This question stemmed from a recent article written by Danny Sullivan Editor-in-Chief at Search Engine Land.

In this article (which is a great read by the way), Danny offers responses by both Bing and Google on specific questions such as:

1. If a link is retweeted or referenced a lot in Twitter, do you count this as a ranking signal?
2. Do you try to calculate the authority of someone who tweets?
3. Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending upon who Tweeted it?
4. Do you try to calculate the authority of someone on Facebook?
5. Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight on Facebook depending upon who posted the link?

It’s very interesting to read the answers and even more interesting to associate it with your own activity on both of these social networks.

Part of the curiosity with Twitter in particular, is because Twitter does not follow links.  They used to, but I believe it was back in 2009 some time, they added nofollow to all of their links.

What this means is that even though you’re tweeting a link and others may retweet it, the “nofollow” portion of that link is telling the search engines “Hey, if you see this link, don’t follow it to its destination and give that destination credit for it.”

But what’s so much more important here is what Danny has referred to as “SocialRank”.  And I am totally on board with him here…let me explain…

Years (and I mean years ago) when Google especially was gaining ground as the “go to” search engine, people realized that you could manipulate the rankings by:

1. Stuffing a bunch of keywords into your meta keywords tag (and if you don’t know what this is, don’t worry, it doesn’t matter any more anyway).
2. Stuffing your page full of keywords in order to rank well for the keyword you were after.
3. Hiding text on the page in the same color as the page background so that the search engines could read it but your site visitors couldn’t.

When this failed to work any longer, people realized that links were a major factor in where you ranked.  And so…reciprocal linking came along (that’s when you trade links with someone else in an effort to help increase the importance of your website.)

Again, Google soon realized that this wasn’t really a *true* indicator of authority and so it began discounting these kinds of links.

So it became important to try and get links to your website from other important websites (“important” as deemed by Google), in order to help your own website ranking.  This “importance” at least in reference to Google is referred to as PageRank which you can see by installing the Google Toolbar within your browser.

But…it’s also important to understand that the PageRank that you see in your browser for a web page is NOT the *true* PageRank of a web page or website.  As a matter of fact, it’s quite old information.  According to Google PageRank Data, the last time it was updated was April 2, 2010 (it’s now late December 2010).  So…over 8 months ago.

The fact is, Google updates this internally quite often but what you may be looking at today is in fact, 8 months old.

So, all this comes down to this:  Google has hundreds of ranking factors that determine where to place you within it’s search results and for what given terms.  People know a little about how Google determines importance of your web pages, but like all indicators that we at least know of, it can all be manipulated.  Whether or not you choose to manipulate it is up to your own moral standards, but the one thing that is extremely difficult to manipulate is your online reputation.

Who believes you?  Who trusts what you say?  Who retweets your links?  Et cetera, et cetera…

This is what Danny refers to within his article.  And I truly believe that this is the wave of the future for websites and their owners; simply because it is so difficult to fake.  If people trust you, they’ll read more of your stuff.  If you offer valuable information, you’ll be talked about more online, and so on.

Consider a great example of Mari Smith who is trusted by thousands of people online for her information and advice on how to use Facebook effectively.  She is a fantastic example of how SocialRank likely works.  I guarantee that if Mari posts a link, it’s retweeted and shared on Facebook a thousand times over.  She has “SocialRank”.

Take the time to read the article by Danny – I think you’ll find it very enlightening.

P.S.  The video by Matt is below…

In around two months time, updates from Facebook will be integrated into Bing search.

What this means to you is that if any of your privacy settings at Facebook are set to “everyone” then all of those updates you make at Facebook will be publicly available on Bing.

*I think I just saw you cringe.*

So unless you don’t want everything you say at Facebook to be out there for the entire world to see, you need to make some changes.

The good news is, this isn’t happening for a couple of months yet so you’ve got plenty of time to change your privacy permissions.

Here’s how you do that:

1. Login to Facebook
2. Click on “Settings” in the upper right hand corner
3. Change the settings so that nothing listed says “everyone”.

And don’t think that just because Bing is now in the picture that Google won’t be far behind…at least on some front.  It’s long been talked about that Facebook is a huge Google competitor.  Yet here comes Bing with the ability to integrate these Facebook updates…which Google has yet to do and which I’m sure was a slap in the face.

Maybe that’s why Google announced that they’ll be integrating real-time Twitter updates just like Bing (who got there first by the way).

All of a sudden, Bing is becoming a huge thorn in Google’s side.  I see a lot of “playing catch-up” going on lately.  But hey, a little competition never hurt anyone right?

Bing recently released their SEO Toolkit (currently still in beta) and I took some time to run through the toolkit to see what kinds of information it gave me.

The first thing you should know is installing it is less than a breeze.

First, you need to be using a PC – no surprise there.

In order to install the toolkit, you need to jump through a bunch of hoops first.

1. You need a PC running Vista, Windows Server, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2. It won’t work on XP (which is a shame).  Most of you reading this (if you’re not using a Mac) will have Windows Vista on your computer.
2. If you do have Windows Vista, you need to be sure that youalso have installed Windows Vista SP1 (service pack 1) or higher. Most of you will also already have this if your computer updates itself regularly.
3. You also need IIS 7 running on your computer. Unless you’ve worked on a server team, the typical webmaster probably won’t understand what this means (huge problem!). Click here to view the Microsoft installation guide and get IIS 7.
   UPDATE: Note that on the Microsoft site – this link points to a topic that is “No Longer Available”.  After checking Microsoft’s own post about this installation guide, I receive the same message.  Hopefully they’ll have it fixed soon.
4. Next, you need to enable IIS 7 before you can install the SEO Toolkit. To do this…
   1. Click Start.
   2. Click Control Panel.
   3. Click Programs.
   4. Select “Turn Windows features on or off”.
   5. When the window opens, select the “Internet Information Services” check box.
   6. Click the plus sign (+) to expand the directory (they call them nodes), expand “world wide web services” and then expand “Application Development Features”.  Finally, check the box next to .net Extensibility.
   7. Click “OK” and then wait…a long time…while your computer updates.

Now, you next have to determine if you’re running a 32-bit or 64-bit version of Windows.

(By now, I’ll bet that a vast majority of people have already said “This is WAY too much trouble – forget it!).  And I wouldn’t blame you.  As much as Microsoft search has evolved, it seems that the rest of the company has not.

To do this…

1. Click Start
2. Right click “Computer” and then choose “Properties”
3. In the “system group” the System Type will tell you what kind you’re running; 32-bit or 64-bit.
4. FINALLY, install the right version.  (Note that these links will download the SEO Toolkit to your computer – they’re directly from Microsoft. If you’d rather view the Microsoft page itself, click here.):
   1. IIS SEO Toolkit for 32-bit Windows
   2. IIS SEO Toolkit for 64-bit Windows
5. NOW, you’re ready to install and use the SEO Toolkit (and it’s probably time for a quick break).  I don’t know about you but my head hurts!

Once you have the SEO Toolkit installed, you’ll need to open the program.  But like most programs that you install, where you expect to see them in your Start menu, this one’s a little tricky.

1. Click the Start icon on your Windows Vista computer.
2. In the Start Search box, type “IIS”.
3. IIS manager should pop up in the window. I suggest that you move this to your desktop in an easier-to-find location.
4. Double click the program.
5. Once it loads in the main menu section scroll down to “Search Engine Optimization” and double click on “Site Analysis”.
6. Next, on the right, click “New Analysis”.
7. Give it a name.
8. Enter in the URL of your website and make your additional choices from here (which aren’t many).
9. Finally click “OK”.

Now the program will traverse your website and find issues (if any) that relate to SEO (as Bing sees it).

There’s various categories that Bing looks at such as SEO, Content, Standards and Performance.

Now, while this was a hassle to install it does give you a great deal of on-page SEO information.

For instance it found multiple spots where I had missed giving an image an alt tag attribute.

It also found a few spots where my description was too long and where I had a few broken hyperlinks – many of these attributed to a bookmarking service that I had included on my web pages.

If you double-click on any of the pages that had issues within the SEO Toolkit, you’ll get a very detailed analysis of that web page (this is definitely a plus).  Things like:

• A Word Analysis which shows you…
  • The counts for any specific word or phrase up to three word phrases.
  • The character count on the page.
  • The links referenced on the page along with their anchor text.
  • The links pointing TO the page.
  • The links coming FROM the page.
    • As well as what the linking status is, is it OK or not found, the linking title, the linked URL the type of link and the anchor text.  All invaluable information to have.

Now, all this being said, I will tell you of one very large (and frustrating) issue that I had.  After I ran through the steps and set up everything exactly as explained, I could NOT get to any of my websites that I had set up in the SEO Toolkit.

I could get anywhere else (so I knew it wasn’t my internet connection) but just not to my own sites.  Obviously very frustrating.

Now, my husband who is a VoIP engineer and who works with this kind of thing on a daily basis couldn’t even figure out what the issue was.  And we together tried multiple things…all to no avail.

Until…for the heck of it, I unplugged my DSL modem, plugged it back in and all was fine (Occam’s Razor).  So in the event you follow through this process, and have the same issues, just try rebooting your modem.  I can’t guarantee it will work for you, but it worked for me.  (You’ve just received a 5-hour-time-saving tip).

All in all, I think that the SEO Toolkit provides great information, so long as you’re willing to put up with the installation of it.  And best of all it’s free!

View this walkthrough at Bing (complete with screenshots) by clicking here.

Ever since Microsoft came out with their new search engine Bing, there have been lots of buzzing about it.  And good buzz at that…not what people expected to see which was just a name change from “Live.com” to “Bing.com” and nothing more.

But Bing has taken a lot of people by surprise and now that Yahoo! has agreed to use Bing’s search results as their own search engine (thus taking the number of major search engines down to 2), it’s a very big deal and has great potential to be a big competitor for Google.

Just for the record, the use of Bing’s search results at Yahoo.com probably won’t come to light until sometime in 2010 or beyond, but it is something to start taking notice of right now.

Because we know that this change is coming, we can be fully prepared for it.  And that means doing a few things to be sure that our websites are on top of these changes starting today.

I’ll be covering Bing in sections during the upcoming newsletters but for now, I want to focus on one of the more crucial elements of getting listed well in Bing and this is where your linking strategy comes into play.

Unlike Google who tends to keep information on ranking well in their search engine pretty close to the hip, only divulging just enough information, Bing seems to be moving in the opposite direction.  While not full-disclosure by any means, Bing does give you a lot of tips and ideas when it comes to ranking well with them.

So let’s take a look at what Bing considers to be important where linking strategies are concerned.

The do’s and the don’ts.

While some of the do’s and don’ts of link building will seem familiar to you if you’ve engaged in link building where Google is concerned, some of the advice through Bing is easier to understand… and truly gives a “no bones about it” kind of approach.

So, let’s cover what these do’s and don’ts are.

DO – Link TO (that is from your own site) other websites that your site visitors would find helpful and useful. When you link to another site you are telling your site visitor that you “endorse” that site, so be sure that you actually do.  Don’t link to a website just because it’s your Mom’s or you promised a friend you would link to them.  If it isn’t helpful and complimentary to your own, skip it.

Do – Link to other sites that are relevant to your own. A wedding cake website linking to a tuxedo rental website would be relevant.  A local coffee shop linking to a PPC marketing product would not be relevant.  The same holds true for those links that point to you – granted you can’t control who links to you, you can influence this to an extent.  IF you are engaging in a link-building campaign where you ask other site owners to link to you, be sure that those sites are relevant to your own.

Do attempt to get high-quality links pointing to you. Quantity is NOT the same thing as quality.  This also holds true for Google.  Just because you have thousands of incoming links to your site does not mean that you’ll rank well.  What matters is the quality of those links.  A thousand poor low-quality links cannot equal the ranking power of one high-quality link.

Do not participate in site-wide linking strategies from “bad neighborhoods”. Search engines know what a bad neighborhood is because the bad neighborhoods give off certain signals.  Bad neighborhoods often consist of families of websites that all link to one another, have little to no content in and of themselves and often cover every kind of topic under the sun.

You want links from authority sites – those sites that are older (and thus “more reliable” as stated by Bing), have had consistent content on them over time and have high quality links pointing to their site as well as away from their site.

You can use this tool – http://www.bad-neighborhood.com/text-link-tool.htm to help you determine if a neighborhood is “bad” or not.

Do use proper canonicalization. This means that you use one style of URL for every link within your site.  If you remember in a past blog post I had talked about how the search engines view different variations of your URL as different domains all-together.

This means that http://YourSite.com and http://www.YourSite.com are viewed as two separate URLs.  Why this is detrimental to you as the site owner, is because the importance of your websites are then spread across two domains instead of one – thus reducing the importance of your website in the search engines eyes.

Now, as you’ve probably guessed, you can’t control how others link to you and they will use a vast number of ways to point to your URL which the search engines will all consider different UNLESS you set up a 301 redirect on each of the subsequent domain names.

So for instance if you wanted http://YourSite.com to be your primary URL that you referred people to and that you used consistently as absolute links on your own site, then…

• www.YourSite.com
• YourSite.com/
• www.YourSite.com/
• YourSite.com/index.html
• www.YourSite.com/index.html
• etc.

All need to have a 301 redirect set up on them that point to the URL you want to be your “main” URL.  In this case, YourSite.com.  Whenever you link within your own site, always, ALWAYS use the YourSite.com or whatever URL you have determined to be your primary URL.

Additionally use absolute links everywhere on your site.  An absolute link means that you actually place the “http://www…whatever your site is.

For example, if you had a page on your site named “espresso-beans.html” and you linked to this page from any other page on your site, it should look like this:  <a href=”http://www.YourSite.com/espresso-beans.html“> Espresso beans</a> and NOT <a href=”espresso-beans.html”> Espresso Beans </a>.

This is referred to as an “absolute URL” and as Bing states “The use of absolute links reinforces the use of your full URL and, like canonicalization, focuses the link juice to that URL.”

When linking to your home page within your own site, use the trailing slash and omit the “index.html” or “default.html” whatever the name of your default home page is.  For example:

http://www.YourSite.com/ and not http://www.YourSite.com (notice the lack of the trailing slash.)

Bing also suggests that you use the title attribute within your internal links. For example:

<a href=”http://YourSite.com/espresso-beans.html” title=”keyword or key phrase describing the page you’re linking to“>Anchor text link (also the keyword or keyword phrase) </a>.

For sites that use dynamic linking (in other words pull descriptions and item numbers from a database), you know that the URL to those pages can get quite long.  Do a search on Amazon.com for any book title and then take a look at the URL in your address bar.  As you can imagine, these kinds of links can make a search engines job quite difficult.

In order to help the search engines use a more user-friendly version of that URL so that they don’t have to do a lot of hard work understanding the link, add some special code into the head section of your web page that will tell the search engines which canonical URL to use.

Ex:  <link rel=”canonical” href=”http://YourSite.com/products.php?item=espressobeans” />  And be absolutely certain that this link actually points to the page you want it to go to and that it WORKS.

Bing suggests to use the nofollow tag on your links if you don’t want them to follow that link.  However, if you want to block an entire page of links from being crawled, instead use the meta robots tag to block access to that content or use a robots.txt file.

What a nofollow tag looks like:

<a href=”http://YourSite.com/espresso-beans.html” rel=”nofollow”> Espresso beans </a>.

What a meta robots tag looks like:

<meta content=”noindex, nofollow”>  (this tells the search engines to NOT index nor follow all of the links on the page this is located on.

You can also use:

<meta content=”index, nofollow”>  which means that the search engines will still index your web page but they won’t follow any links on the page itself.

In summary, we know that the merger of search results between Bing and Yahoo! will be a significant step in the right direction where the search engines are concerned.  And we’re also aware that Bing is starting to get lots of great feedback.

Since Bing is new, relatively speaking, they are handing you outright information that can help you rank better with them.  Use these suggestions for your own site’s benefits.  All of these suggestions will work well with Google as well…rarely do we see a big change of what’s allowed and what’s not where the search engines are concerned.  But, Bing is a little more forthright with their information … which is something we haven’t seen in a long time with Google.

After using it for a few minutes I immediately found quite a few things that I like over Google’s search results.

First, it’s a heck of a lot cleaner.  Google has slowly added in their Universal search results into the natural results so much so that it’s become messy.  You’ve got web pages, images, videos, news stories, blog posts, suggested searches, and ads at the top and side of nearly every search results page.  And while they’ve done their best to cater to the masses and still do provide the best relevant search results, I especially like a few things about Bing over Google.

1. It’s fast.  I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly search results were returned.  It was a lot faster than I had expected.
2. When you do a search in Bing and hover over any of the listings you’ll notice a bar with a small orange dot next to the listing.  When you hover over the listing itself, a quick preview of the web page will show up on the right.  Interesting note here.  In Chrome, it only works for the first listing, once.  At least this has been in my experience.  In Firefox, you have to hover over the orange dot but in IE each preview shows just by hovering over the listing itself.
3. Related searches are shown to the left of the search results instead of at the bottom of the page like Google.  I find this much easier to use.
4. Your recent search history is shown to the left of the listings as well.  With a click you can go back to a search you just did instead of having to search again or resorting to using your back button like you do with Google.  You can also clear your searches all together or even hide them if you want.
5. Like Google, you have a video link at the top of the page.  However, and this is one feature I really like with Bing, unlike Google where you’re shown a listing of various videos from various places, Bing let’s you organize the videos by length, screen size, resolution and source (YouTube, Hulu, Metacafe, etc.).  Whereas in Google’s video search results, you have to scroll through the listings to find out this information.  The downside is that of all of the video sources available, Bing only lists a handful.
6. The images link also allows you to sort by size, layout, color, & people.  Again, a nice feature that let’s you drill down to what it is you’re looking for instead of having to scroll through pages and pages of images.
7. The “related searches” in Bing are, at least in my opinion, more related to the search term that I entered than what Google believes would be related.  For example, in doing a search on “Spring Cleaning” Google suggests that I might be wanting a “spring cleaning poem” which couldn’t be further from what I was seeking.
8. The search results themselves.  Here we get to the heart of it all.  While Google has gained the reputation of having the most relevant search results, I did a quick comparison of what Bing believes to be the top search results and what Google believes to be most relevant. Click for image.  I still believe Google to return the most relevant search results.

All in all I think Bing has done a great job; I especially like how I can drill down into certain areas like videos and images.

This takes me back to the days when I used to work closely with engineers.  As a manager for a new web-based interface for a large telecommunications firm, there would often be some head-butting happening because the designers felt it was better for the end user to do it one way whereas the engineers logically would suggest another way because it was more efficient.

However, in all cases, the overall goal is to make the end user happy.  This end-user appreciates the interface of Bing, but also appreciates the search results at Google.  Maybe they should all just get together and then we, the end users would have the best of both worlds.