What can social media have to offer SEO? At MWI we hear this a lot from potential and current clients. Social media is rapidly growing channel for marketing that most businesses have only begun using in the last few years, however it’s essential to utilize it particularly if you’re investing funds into SEO. Creating and managing social media accounts are important for supporting SEO efforts, even though their benefits aren’t immediately apparent. Here are five reasons why social media is crucial for SEO.
1.) Social Media Signals
It’s not a secret that Google, Bing and other major search engines have been using online dialogue in their algorithm for ranking for quite some years now. Whenever people tweet, like, comment or share an article it is referred to as a social engagement. A piece of content that has more social engagements will be able to show more social signals. These social signals are used by search engines to rank content. It’s a way to determine the quality of content that people are able to use in comparison to what their algorithm decides is of good quality. A piece of content could be instantly indexed in the event that it’s receiving lots of engagement on social media.
2) Link Building
It’s long gone of soliciting websites to add links to your site. With the emergence of Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithms SEOs are now forced to create links in the old fashioned way by creating high-quality content that is worthy of linking. But how do you reach sites that would be willing to link to your site if you ask them directly, which is an “unnatural” link building technique? Social media can help. Social media allows you to present your content in front of the right people, who could be attracted to link to it in the event that it is worthy of linking to. They will also spread your content among others, increasing your influence.
3.) Content amplification
You can create all the excellent content you’d like to however, it will not get any traction without amplifying it. Marketing via email is an effective method to increase the reach of your content but it will only get head to socialwb.com those on your marketing list. Social media allows you to connect with new audiences through your content. If you post your content to your followers, they will be sure to share it with their own followers in the event that they find it helpful. The people who share it will share your content with their followers, increasing your reach. Additionally, you will gain relevant traffic through inbound linking social signals, inbound linking, and brand awareness, all of which can be utilized by search engines to make quality determination.
content amplification lifecycle
4) Brand Awareness and Signals
Search engines will use your brand’s name and reputation to determine the credibility of your website and how trustworthy it should be in their ranking algorithms. Aside from amplifying your content social media can also help to increase awareness of your brand. This is what Google refers to as co-citation. These co-citations are built by using social media to boost Google’s trust as well as aid with brand-name searches.
5.) Social Indexing
Since the search engines are able to index social media websites, they are now showing as search results. This lets your company’s brand be displayed in search results for search queries that are branded and not restricted to your website. But there’s more than that. Individual Tweets from Twitter were initially indexed and included in search results too which gave another means to get your content noticed in the search results. It was only for a short time, however, and Google shut it down 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.
