Just as we thought, we are starting to see proof that having people retweet and reference your content and links is a factor in how Google and other search engines are ranking your websites.

Earlier this year I blogged about how Google’s Matt Cutts and SEO Wiz Danny Sullivan were talking about SERPS slowly including social networking authority as factors in their search engine indexing and ranking algorithms.

Low and behold, I see a case study over at SEOMoz that proves just this fact as a Tweet they posted about a Beginner’s Guide To SEO went somewhat viral after a major social networking site re-tweeted (basically forwarded for those of you who are not yet Twitter junkies) and others did the same.

Within a very short time the link back to the webpage they referenced for their Guide to SEO suddenly started getting some pretty decent traffic as it ranked for the term “Beginner’s Guide” when there was previously NO ranking and NO traffic coming from this keyword phrase.

Pretty strong proof point that the Search Engines are watching for signs that your content is liked by people on social networking sites – once again, it’s time to jump in and begin to post daily about your topic, market – include a good balance of informational or opinion posts along with others that provide inbound links to various pages on your site – you just may see a jump in traffic.