The more visibility your pages have in search results, the more likely you will garner attention and attract prospective and existing customers to your business.
First of all, let’s look at what SEO means.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” In simple terms, it means the process of improving your site to increase its visibility when people search for products or services related to your business on Google, Bing, and other search engines.
Therefore, good SEO involves many different activities, such as:
– Identifying relevant keywords with good search traffic potential
– Creating high-quality, helpful content and optimizing it for search engines and for users.
– Including relevant links from high-quality sites
– Measuring the results
How does social media impact SEO?
Social media does not directly contribute to SEO ranking, but the links you share across social platforms increase brand exposure.
Therefore, below are 5 key reasons why social media is important for SEO.
1. Social media signals
It’s no secret that Google, Bing, and other major search engines have been using online dialogue as part of their ranking algorithms for some time now. This is called social engagement whenever people tweet, like, comment, or share a piece of content. The more social engagements a piece of content has, the more social signals you build to your site. Search engines measure these social signals, and use them as a quality factor when ranking content. It’s a way to measure what content people find helpful over what their automated algorithm determines is high quality. A piece of content can also be indexed instantly if it’s receiving much social engagement.
2. Brand awareness & signals
Brand identity and awareness can tell search engines a lot about the quality of your website and how much it should be trusted in its ranking algorithms. Aside from amplifying your content, social media also helps build brand awareness. Google calls this co-citation. Building these co-citations through social media will help improve Google’s trust in your company website as well as help with branded search queries.
3. Social Media Mentions and Rankings
At Pubcon Pro 2017, Google’s Gary Illyes had a keynote discussion with SEO Eric Enge. Gary discussed how Google might use online mentions of a brand. “The context in which you engage online, and how people talk about you online, actually can impact what you rank for.” — Gary Illyes.
4. Avoid Google penalties with less focus on links
It is no secret that Google looks down on aggressive link building done to game the search algorithm. They are constantly releasing updates and refreshes to remove low-quality listings. Using social media together with your content marketing helps you build real, natural links that the search engines love and reward accordingly. Also, when you do it the right way there is no need to frantically check GWT every day to make sure the site wasn’t hit with a penalty. Social media is a great way to help enhance your search engine optimization. The days of shortcuts and low-quality SEO are over, so make sure you position yourself for long-term success, and that involves getting social.
5. Local SEO
Social media also affects your local SEO efforts in a few ways. As you already know, your NAP (the name, address, and phone number of your business) plays an important role in local search rankings. If you maintain consistent NAP information across all of your listings and website, Google will consider your business more credible. And that can boost your rankings in local search results. Which makes it crucial to use the same NAP information across your social media profiles, local listings, and website.
Additionally, some social media platforms let you geo-tag your Stories and posts. This is a great way to gain more visibility among a local audience, helping you expand your reach. On Instagram, for instance, users can conduct a search for content that’s geotagged to a specific location. You should be able to attract more local visitors this way.
