What the heck does social media have to in relation to SEO? At MWI, we get lots of questions from our potential and current clients. Social media is an incredibly growing channel for marketing that most companies have only started making use of in the past few years, however it’s vital to take advantage of it – especially if you’re investing resources into search engine optimization. The creation and management of social media accounts is crucial to support SEO efforts, even though the benefits of social media aren’t always obvious. Of the many reasons to think about social media as part of your overall strategy to be online, here are 5 reasons why it’s crucial for SEO.
1.) Social Media Signals
It’s not a secret that Google, Bing, and other search engines utilize online conversations as part of their algorithm for ranking. When people share content via Twitter, Facebook or comment on an article that is known as a social engagement. A piece of content that has the highest number of social engagements is likely to have more social signals. Social signals are utilized by search engines to determine the quality of content. This is a method for search engines to decide the most popular content and what algorithm they believe to be high-quality. If the content you’re looking at is receiving lots of social interaction it will be immediately classified.
2.) Link Building
It’s long gone from the time that you could solicit hyperlinks from other sites. With the advent of Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithms, SEOs are forced to create links in by hand to create quality content that is worthy of linking. How can you get your content to websites that will link to your content, when you ask them directly, which would be considered «unnatural»? Social media is your answer. Social media enables you to place your content in front of people who are interested and could be convinced to link to it should it be worthy of linking to. People who be able to share your content with other people increasing your influence.
3) Amplification of content
The quality of your content is, it will not achieve much success without amplification. Sure, email marketing can be an effective way to boost the content, but it’ll only reach people within your database of marketing. Social media lets you increase the reach of your content. Once you share your content, your followers will also connect with their friends when they are satisfied with the content. Then those people will spread the word to their networks which will increase the reach of your content. In return, you earn an abundance of relevant traffic, inbound links, brand recognition and social signals These are all used by search engines to assess the quality of your content.
content amplification lifecycle
4.) Brand Continune Recognition and Signals
Brand recognition and brand identity can inform search engines an awful lot about the overall quality of your site and how much it is believed to be in its ranking algorithms. Social media helps to build an image for your business and also boosts the content you publish. This is what Google calls co-citation. These co-citations are built via social media in order to increase Google’s credibility and aid in the search engine’s branded searches.
5) Social Indexing
Search engines have been indexing social media sites for a number of years now, which means they now show up in results pages for search engines. This lets your brand appear in search results that include branded search queries , which is more than the site of your business. However, it’s even more than that. Individual tweets on Twitter were once indexed and shown in search results, too – enabling another way for your website to be ranked in search. However, it was only temporary it ended and Google removed it after couple of months. Google will once again show tweets in search results, so it’s important to leverage it for getting your content ranked.