This post was written by @brentnau - an SEO jedi who works with @berniepiekarski at SMT. They are awesome, and you should check them out at http://smtusa.com

Amplify’d from www.smtusa.com

Survey Finds Social Media Impacts Search Engine Rankings Tuesday, September 28, 2010 A recent study, The Impact of Social Media on Search, by BtoB and Business.com took a look at how business-to-business (B2B) marketers are integrating social media with search engine marketing (SEM). The study polled 464 B2B marketers to see how they are using social media to improve their search engine rankings. Whether social media had an impact on their search engine performance? 44% stated it had a positive impact 28% stated neutral 27% stated they did not know 1% stated it had a negative impact One of the interesting things in the study is that 41% of the respondents were not currently measuring the impact from social media on their search engine rankings. Those that were, used such metrics as organic search engine rankings, number of inbound links, search volume for brand or keyword phrases, and search engine marketing conversion rates. The top metrics B2B marketers were using to measure the effectiveness of their social media campaign: Visits to their web site (54%) Number of Fans/Followers and “Likes” (48%) Number of company or product mentions (35%) Number of retweets (28%) It was also noted that 25% of B2B marketers were NOT measuring their social media campaigns. Establishing your metrics should always be included into your social media game plan before launching your campaign. To help set up your social media game plan, you should check out the informative infographic from B2Bento that provides a quickstart guide to social media for business. Read more at www.smtusa.com