Detroit: Social media has long been reported to be the next big driver of search engine significance, ultimately replacing backlinks. And for the first time, SEOs have found out those strong correlations between the number and diversity of social votes, and improved search engine rankings. In brief, websites with more “likes”, “tweets”, and “+1s” tend to rank better.

These outcomes come from three latest “state of SEO in 2013″ studies done by Search Metrics, Moz, and Netmark. While every study differed with each other on different issues, social media was not one of them.

Social media is one of the foremost indicators of content that will rank high on search engines. Consistently, highest ranking pages had scores of Facebook likes and shares, Twitter tweets, and, more than anything else, Google +1s.

Now, before going hog-wild and “+1” every page on our websites, remember, “Correlation does not imply causation.” It is feasible that social media votes have little to do with the ranking skill of content, and simply that quality content Google ranks well also tends to gather more social votes. Or, it could be that Google will position content higher if it has many social votes. It is not known certainly.

What is for sure is that every website should have social media included on every page, giving guests the capability to like, tweet, and +1 website content as they see fit. Hotel marketers must make social interaction as easy as possible for their guests.

The charts in the slideshow are from the three studies. Search Metrics lists Google+1s more than anything else as the maximum correlation to better search engine rankings. Moz mentions all social network metrics united as an important ranking metric, while Netmark also singles out Google+1s as a correlation to higher rankings.

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