This week my love for SEOmoz has just grown even more, as the new Social Analytics has just launched. Available in SEOmoz Pro accounts only, Social Analytics provides data on key social metrics such as followers, retweets and likes.

Although SEOmoz did introduce some social indicators into the Pro version of Open Site Explorer earlier this year, they aren’t nearly as useful as the new stats provided in Social Analytics. Not only can users get information on how many mentions a Twitter profile has had, or how many comments have been made on a Facebook post, the simple-looking, yet handy graphs in Social Analytics show interesting trends over time, so you can monitor your performance effectively.

I think the reason I like the new feature so much is because of its clean, simple interface that nicely collects your social stats in one place. Oh, but that’s not yet true… the one downfall (which isn’t bad going!) is that currently only Facebook and Twitter accounts can be added and monitored. However SEOmoz have thankfully mentioned that they are now working towards getting other top networks in there, such as Google+ and LinkedIn. Hurrah!

My favourite feature of Social Analytics is the monitoring of competitors’ social activity. By adding your chosen competitors, you can benchmark your progress against theirs, and keep an eye out for any spikes in their performance which might alert you of some good tactics that are being used, whether it be a Facebook competition or a popular blog post being Tweeted around. What is also interesting is that the social analytics include Klout scores. I know Klout has been getting more attention recently and now that my trustworthy source SEOmoz has decided to use Klout, I’m certainly feeling more trust towards the social benchmarking tool.

Up until now, the Pro account has been used by mostly SEO marketers, but with this new social feature, I can see more social media marketers becoming interested and joining the SEOmoz fan club (we love you Rand!) It’s definitely a sign of the times as social starts to play a bigger part in search, and the SEOmoz Pro account is a nice place for SEOs to gain insights, build integrated strategies, and start talking!

Are you a Pro Member of SEOmoz and as excited about the new data as we are? Or have you never been a member but now find yourself reaching for your wallet?

How the rise of Twitter could spell the end of the PageRank Algorithm

I watched an interesting video on Web Pro News, where Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz discussed the possibility that Twitter is ‘cannibalising’ traditional SEO practices such as Link Baiting. He expresses a very convincing argument.

More WebProNews Videos

Fishkin says that you can calculate PageRank from the twitter graph in the same way as you can on the web.

Why are links going to be less important?

Reading more of Fishkin over at SEOmoz I came across a supporting article from him where he elaborates on this subject. Read it here. Basically, he suggests that Blogging is more about building your own authority and is less popular than it once was, so those still blogging are doing it for themselves and not to share knowledge with their peers, and so rarely link out.

I can only surmise from this that:

a.) blogging for yourself becomes introspective to the level that it not only becomes dull and difficult to think of new things to say and,

b.) the popularity of blogging has decreased because linking out has proved to be unsuccessful for SEO purposes so people are less inclined to do it, and therefore have less to say. And,

c.) if linking to fun or interesting sources can be achieved much quicker on Twitter than on your own blog then this is what people will do.

Having said this I do think there is merit in linking out from your blog but only if you go to interesting and informative sources. It’s a way of connecting what you have to say with what your wider community has to say on the subject.

Why follow when you can lead?

Personally, I think that using blogs to talk about your own products, services, industry relevant topics and your own opinions is a better use of time than randomly re-publishing or re-writing other ‘more interesting’ posts written by other people. As well as this, I really think the place for a blog is to talk about your services in a way that cannot be done on a static brochure style website, as the nature of a blog is comfortable, friendly and much more personal.

The purpose of a corporate blog should not be to regurgitate the same tone and language as the static site would have, but to connect with your customers on a more personal and engaging level. Of course it’s still all about sales, it has to be because that’s the nature of the beast, but you can do it in a more creative and engaging way.

Fishkin goes on to say that this trend may well spell the end of backlinks as the main ranking factor. I can’t help think, that although this remains to be seen, it could liven things up, eh?