Getting into Google is not hard. The challenge is getting ranked. How well you rank largely depends on how many quality sites link to you.

And as social media matures, now the engines are beginning to use your connections to influence your rank.

For example, if you're logged into Google and do a search for something, the results that show up may be heavily influenced by who is in your social circles in the Google Plus Network.

Also, if you are logged out of Google, the results may be altogether different from when you were logged in.

Google is moving more toward personalized search, which means no two people will see the same results when they perform keyword searches.