2013 saw a ton of Google ranking changes to algorithms and ranking variables and search criteria and all those mathy terms no one wants to think about. And 2014 will be another huge year of changes, so you’d better keep up!!

Social media is our specialty here at PuTTin’ OuT, so here’s what you’ll need to know about our favorite search marketing tactic if you don’t want to be left in the digital dust this year.

Social Media Value = Content Value = Site Value

Google has been making huge improvements to their search rankings to reduce spam and improve the value of the really worthwhile sites of high quality, and who’s better to judge quality than the people who are going to those sites?

Rather than just relying on the numbers to tell the story, the powers of Google will use your social klout more and more to prove you’re a true authority in your industry. So you’d better polish up your social campaigns (a good place to start is your LinkedIn profile)!!

Google+1 Is More Than a Plus

According to Moz Search Engine Ranking research, Google+1 now matters more than Facebook shares and tweets. That’s a BIG deal!! How are your +1’s??!!

Google+ hashtags make a big difference here, too. Now you have to start thinking about your G+ updates like blog posts and social posts, complete with targeted hashtags and relevant keywords.

Google+ Posts Matter

You may have noticed Google+ posts are starting to show up in Google SERPs. That means it’s increasingly important to have an actual Google+ presence and start linking to your website on your posts and encouraging your followers to do the same for you. The added exposure is good for ranking and exposure, so hop to it!!!

Google Authorship

Like social media’s increasingly valuable presence, Google Authorship is going to be used as a sort of gauge for your value as a content provider. If your authored posts are generating big traffic with low bounce rate, you can bet they’ll be putting your future posts higher in the SERPs.

Don’t Forget about Your Other Presences

This Twitter case study shows a company that used Twitter campaigns to increase search ranking by nearly 50% – that’s going from the bottom of the search results to the top 5, just from some social media marketing.

How do you project social media marketing changes will affect your approach to SEO in 2014?