There’s been a lot of buzz surrounding two major events in the internet marketing community lately: the Facebook IPO release (and subsequent legal debacle), and Google’s new algorithm update. Two monumental events, both making news, both leaving many people up in arms, but on the surface, completely unrelated to each other. Or are they?

Google’s latest update to its search algorithm, announced by Google Engineer Matt Cutts on April 24th, promised penalization for “over optimization” or spammy activity. While there are many factors that could get a site flagged for having “too much SEO”, the update has particularly zeroed in on link building activity.

Oh how you would think the sky was falling in SEO land. Google actually acknowledging a penalty for too much SEO?! And how are we to do our jobs if we can’t link build?

Of course these are silly, rhetorical statements for SEO professionals like https://www.plasticsurgeonseogeeks.com/ who have been doing their homework – and, ahem, their jobs. Google, more or less, has always made an effort to filter the spam and favor relevant content. It’s one of the many reasons they’ve remained the world’s leading search engine by a mile. And it’s why a good SEO pro never puts all their eggs in one basket. So what is this update all about?

Let’s cut back to Facebook making its stock market debut. While the actual valuation of the IPO may have been a let-down, Facebook going public is still a pretty big deal. It shows how much the dorm-room-born social media platform has grown. And it validates just how much the general population interacts with, even to an extent relies upon, the social giant.

Even accounting for an inflated IPO, Facebook’s valuation was still the highest ever for a tech company. And why is it so valuable? Because so many people use it, every day, for a multitude of reasons. And it’s such a part of most people’s online experience that it’s changed the way the internet works, and that includes Google.

As the internet evolves to be more and more socially focused, Google’s standard for what they deem relevant content to a search phrase must also evolve to place favor on the websites that have content worth interacting with. A site that is well-optimized is not stuffed with keywords and supported by thousands of back links from spammy off-shore companies. It is one that Google can get through at the technical level, and that people want to tell their friends about on the social level. It has content worth linking to, and it interacts with its community on social sites like Twitter, Pinterest, Google + (sigh), and yes, Facebook.

We’ve talked before about how Social Media and SEO are no longer separate entities, and sound like broken records preaching it to our clients, prospects, friends, families, and pets. Ultimately, the key to successful, sustainable SEO is to build your online presence naturally but mindfully, providing plenty of opportunity for your brand to interact with your online community in meaningful ways. As social media has become a staple to many people’s daily online activity, Google will naturally factor it into their search algorithm. We saw it recently when Google began integrating their Plus icons onto search results. We see it in their algorithm updates that filter out sites using bogus links and favor those who take the time to acquire links through quality viral content. But nothing could be clearer evidence of this than a photo of Mark Zuckerberg hand-in-hand with the CEO of NASDAQ, displaying that, beyond a doubt, social is a big $%&*ing deal.