Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I'm aware that Google have addressed this before and specifically said that social signals are not a ranking factor: http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2325343/matt-cutts-facebook-twitter-social-signals-not-part-of-google-search-ranking-algorithms

However I came across this (admittedly great) infographic from Neil Patel, an SEO I have a lot of respect for: http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/01/31/how-social-signals-impact-search-engine-rankings/

In the post he specifically states that "both Google and Bing use data from social sites in order to determine how high to rank your website."

I have always understood that social signals help drive links by spreading your content to a bigger audience, thereby getting your content in front of people who are likely to link. I also appreciate that content that is shareable is also likely to be linkworthy.

However. Neil doesn't talk about correlation here, he talks about social signals as a ranking factor. Is he being misleading, or has the game changed since Matt Cutts said they don't use social signals?

Was this the only change you made? Supposedly meta descriptions have no bearing on rankings, but this depends how much you believe what Google says. I personally don't believe they are a ranking factor but it would be hard to argue this if you think you haven't amended anything else.

Very helpful thanks Miriam. Your answer confirms my gut feeling on this, I just wanted to make sure I was on the right lines. Never heard of the same business offering separate services from two physical locations before.

I think on the site we'll have two separate location pages, as you suggest. This way we can link the listings to separate URLs and keep the services separate.

Thanks Dan, it doesn't look like the example article is using first click free. So I guess the answer is no, Google can't read the hidden content in this example?

If an article is published on The Times (for example), can Google by-pass the subscription sign-in to read the content and index the links in the article?

Example: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/life/property/overseas/article4245346.ece

In the above article there is a link to the resort's website but you can't see this unless you subscribe. I checked the source code of the page with the subscription prompt present and the link isn't there.

Is there a way that these sites deal with search engines differently to other user agents to allow the content to be crawled and indexed?

Your snippet will be populated based on the information Google feels is the most relevant to the query. Meta descriptions are one of the elements Google can use for this purpose, but if it feels your on-page content (for example) is more relevant to the user's search, this will show instead.

The Open Directory Project is another way your snippet can be created - Google uses DMoz and other listings to create your snippet, although you can opt out of this by using the noodp instruction in your robots meta tag.

If you want your carefully-crafted description to show in search, make sure it is directly keyword-relevant to the query you want it to show for. If you're selling red shoes, make sure 'red shoes' is included in the meta description, preferably as an exact match phrase. This won't help you rank higher, but it will help your MD show as opposed to your page content or any other information.

Both really. For example if I was looking for SEO <location>in Google I'd want to see companies who were based in that area. If I was then told I had to go to another location for a meeting, I might be put off.</location>

Saying that, with SEO/PPC they can be more remote - it's not like looking for a taxi company. We have a couple of options, not sure which to go with.

Our agency has three main services - SEO, PPC and web design. We're in the process of setting up a new office in a different city where our PPC team will be based, while SEO and web will stay in the original office.

How do we handle local SEO/Google My Business listings in this situation? Geo-targeted service pages and two separate GMB listings?

Although Google treats both as separate sites, I always assumed that uploading the disavow file to the canonical version of your site would solve the problem. Is this the case, or has anyone seen better results uploading to both versions?