Over the past year Bing and Google have made substantial changes in terms of adding social signals to influence the way content are positioned and presented in search results. Google has also begun implementing Panda and Penguin to address web spam and content quality that have a significant impact in search engine optimization. Google PageRank is an algorithm that many people speculate to be diminishing in its influence. Significant increases in social media signals from Google+ are significantly increasing as a counter to the influence of PagRank. However, marketers should not worry about Google PageRank and concentrate more about content creation, search engine optimization, and social media promotion that are useful to their customers.

Does anyone pay attention to any search results after the first three in Google?

Generally, the top position gets the most attention. Advertising network research shows that the #1 has more traffic than the #2 positions. Recent study shows that there is little difference between positions 1, 2, and 3 in terms of the number of clicks.

However, you must not think that being #1 is the only goal and seemingly impossible. The user experience for the same keyword search is different from one person to the other. These variances are based on the geographical location of the searcher, and the search phrase itself. When you consider your ranking in the search results, understand that the users experience differ from what your customers see.

Another consideration is whether content author verification is included in the search. Assuming that each content has relevant titles and description, if the #1 and 2 positions are all text and #3 includes an author image, #3 is a more attractive search result. To sum it all up, the ranking position is best, but it is also important to be most appealing in optimizing every opportunity.

Why do you have to focus on content, social media and search engine optimization to optimize your web presence?

Traditionally, search engine optimization were very focused on optimizing the content to achieve an advantage in search results. The focus then was more on search engine placements rather than optimizing the customer search experience. However, recent best practices search engine optimization technique mainly focused on connecting brand content with people looking for the things with most influence on their search journey. Content is the reason why search engines exist, and content is the outcome of social media sharing. Search engines are now looking beyond basic web page text and links as the determining factors for the best search results. Both social media and search drive the discovery of content that influence sharing and transaction.

With Google's Panda updates, more focuses are given on quality content rather than quantity. So, understand what your customers care about and create a continuous stream of relevant and useful content they will respond to and the search engines will love.

Janet Grace Ortigas is the Founder/Managing Director of Visual SEO Copy, the brainchild of a vision to create a writing service that provides a diverse and high-quality digital content across online platforms for entrepreneurs and business.