A brand’s social media footprint appears to be an increasingly important factor in the order of natual search results on Google. As you may or may not know, a page’s rank in search results on Google is determined by Google’s Page Rank Algorithm (actually named after Larry Page, one of the founders of Google).

Google Page Rank for a given page is actually a whole number from 1 to 10 that Google defines roughly as a the probability of a particular page being found among all other pages on the web. While Google page rank has traditionally been based on on-page factors, like keywords in title, and linking factors, like the number of quality inbound links a site gets, it’s been apparent for awhile that Google has expanded their algorithm to include social media.

SmartClick Ad Works, a Boulder, Colorado-based online social media agency recently ran an experiment with a client that shows just how a brand’s social media activity can affect ranking in the short term.

Before this well-liked consumer retail brand engaged us to do social media for them, they hadn’t done any online search optimization at all. Over the years, they had risen to a Google Page Rank of 3. In the month of July, we began actively managing their Facebook and Twitter accounts with daily posts. We did nothing else.

By the end of August, the Google Page Rank of the client’s home page increased from a 3 to a 4. Now this is just one client, but it’s interesting, how the only thing change the brand made was to begin posting on Facebook and Tweeting on Twitter. Because they were interesting posts, those posts were getting a lot of likes, and a lot of retweets.

Google’s reasoning is apparently that social media footprint is a measure of a brand’s credibility. If people are reposting, liking, and Re-Tweeting posts, they see that brand as more credible than a brand that no one is talking about in social media.

Increasing a brand’s social media footprint is now a viable search engine optimization strategy. SEO is now just one more reason for consumer brands to get off the fence and embrace social media in a big way.