What the heck does social media have to relate to SEO? At MWI, we get these questions frequently from our potential and current clients. While social media has been an increasing marketing channel in recent times, many companies haven’t yet begun to take advantage of it. This is crucial to consider if you’re planning to invest in SEO. While the benefits of social media might not be immediately apparent, they are crucial for SEO aid. Here are five benefits of social media is essential for SEO.
1) Social Media Signals
It’s not a secret that Google, Bing and other major search engines have been using online chat in their algorithm for ranking for quite some years now. Social engagements occur when people comment, like on, share or tweet on a piece of content. The more social engagements your content has, the more social signals it will bring to your website. Search engines look at the social signals they receive, and consider it an index of quality when ranking the content. This allows search engines to know the most popular content and what their algorithm deems as high-quality. If something receives lots of social shares the content can be indexable.
2.) Link Building
The days of going out and asking for websites to link to yours. Since the introduction of Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm SEOs are now forced to build links the traditional way and create content of high-quality that is linked-worthy. But how do you reach sites who are willing to link to your content if asking them directly is thought to be an “unnatural” link building method? Social media is your solution. Social media can help you put your content in front of relevant groups of people who may be convinced to link to it should it be worthy of linking to. They will also promote your content to others increasing your influence.
3.) Content Amplification
You can create all the top-quality content you like but it’s not going to gain any traction without amplifying it. Email marketing is great method to boost the content you create, but it won’t get to those on your list of marketing contacts. You can reach new audiences through social media. When you share your content, your followers will also spread it to their networks in the event that they find it helpful. This will cause them to share it with their following, further increasing your reach. Additionally, you will gain relevant traffic and inbound links social signals, inbound linking, and brand awareness All of which can be used by search engines to determine content quality evaluation.
content amplification lifecycle
4) Brand Awareness and Signals
Brand identity and awareness can tell search engines much about the credibility of your website and the degree to which it should be respected in their ranking algorithms. Apart from boosting the quality of your content social media also aids in build brand awareness. This is what Google refers to as co-citation. These co-citations can be developed by using social media to boost Google’s trust as well as aid with search results that are branded.
5) Social Indexing
Since search engines are able to index social media accounts, socialwb.com (click here for more) they are now showing on search results pages. This lets your brand appear in search results for your branded search queries on more than the site of your business. This is even more effective. Individual tweets on Twitter were initially indexed and included in search results, too which gave another means for your website to be ranked in the search results. The program was only temporary, however it ended and Google removed it after few months. Google will once again show tweets in search results, so it’s important to leverage it for getting your content ranked.
