How Social Media Can Increase Your Search Rankings - with Noran El-Shinnawy (4:58) Dr. Ralph F. Wilson , Web Marketing Today - Sep 13, 2011

In this video interview, social media expert Noran El-Shinnawy discusses the role of social media mentions in increasing your ranking on the search engines. Says El-Shinnawy, you're beginning to see who has recommended you on social media, such as Google+1, leveraging word-of-mouth recommendations.

Google and other search engines are trying to put the most relevant search results on top. This used to involve metatags and incoming links only. But now, relevance can be indicated by who is talking about your company on social media.

Google+ is a relatively new social network that is growing exponentially and becoming important in getting search rankings. Google no longer includes Twitter results in their "real time" tab, but rather their own Google+ mentions. Currently, Google spiders aren't indexing comments on Facebook. Bing, however, is aggressively indexing tweets.

Since Google+ is now affecting Google rankings, businesses should include a Google+ button among their social media buttons to encourage mentions there.