SEO is all about growing your visibility in organic search engine results. Social media networks are search engines. There’s no social media strategy without SEO. Understanding how social media and SEO work together When people think of SEO, they automatically think Google. Social media content is indexable content Many people don’t know this. Many of the links on Twitter are also not followed by Google. This means that your website would rank higher than others with less authority. SEO has evolved to be more people-centric SEO has always been super technical. You can get even more strategies in my comprehensive post on social media marketing for local businesses. Social media is the way to do that.
I’ll come right out and say it.
People who are quick to discount social media’s impact on SEO are missing the point.
I know that there’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding social signals and how they affect organic search rankings.
But think about this for a second.
SEO is all about growing your visibility in organic search engine results.
Social media networks are search engines.
That’s as clear-cut of a correlation that I can think of.
There’s no social media strategy without SEO. They aren’t two separate things. They work as one.
Yes, Google has said in the past that it does not consider social signals to be a ranking factor.
That’s perhaps where all the controversy stems from.
But guess what?
It doesn’t matter.
Your objectives as a marketer remain the same.
- Grow your brand equity
- Build trust and authority
- Drive traffic to your website
- Convert your website traffic into sales
- Serve your customers exceptionally well
The individual roles that social media and SEO have to play in fulfilling these objectives are unmistakable.
When executed on their own, the results are staggering.
Just imagine what they can achieve when you use them to complement each other.
Here’s a map of how SEO and social support each other:
If you want more detail on how the two are intertwined, this post is for you.
More specifically, we’ll look at why a poor social media strategy will damage your SEO efforts.
Understanding how social media and SEO work together
When people think of SEO, they automatically think Google.
It’s crucial to note that Google isn’t the only search engine.
Yes, Google has the largest share of search. Compared to other options, Google is responsible for more than 80% of search on all devices.
Guess what the second largest search engine is?
It’s YouTube!
YouTube is as social as it gets. To top it off, video drives a 157% increase in organic traffic from search engines.
You can begin to see how not leveraging a social network like YouTube can hurt your SEO.
This means that it’s imperative that you’re active on YouTube if you want to distribute video content.
My point is simple.
Social media is a powerful vehicle to increase your influence, promote your content, and drive traffic to your website.
This can only strengthen your SEO efforts.
I’ll be straight up with you though.
You can’t optimize your social media strategy today and see a direct increase in your rankings tomorrow.
That’s not how it works.
SEO is an organic technique that takes some time to drive results. The same goes for a brilliant social media strategy.
It’s probably why 49% of marketers consider social media to be the most difficult marketing activity to set in motion.
In my experience, most people don’t wait long enough to see results.
If you have a solid strategy, it will affect your organic search performance in the long run.
I know marketers are up in arms about whether social signals are a ranking factor or not.
Forget about ranking factors for a minute. There are 200 of them!
Instead, focus on building value for your audience so that you’re regarded as a trusted and authoritative source of information.
A healthy social media presence is a big part of that mission.
Here are the reasons you should give social some time and attention if you want to improve your SEO.
1. Social media content is indexable content
Many people don’t know this.
Social media posts are crawled and indexed by search engines.
Naturally, not all of them are indexed. There’s no way that the billions of social media posts published every day are all deemed as relevant by Google.
Still, some pages are indexed and returned to users in search results.
If you search for a brand name or an individual’s name, there’s a decent chance you’ll get their social media profiles as a top result.
Here’s what happens when I search for my name. My LinkedIn and Twitter profiles turn up even before my blog, Quicksprout.
That’s a big deal.
To top it off, marketers have found that social media can speed up the process of getting your website content indexed.
How?
Content that picks up huge momentum on social media will likely be indexed more quickly by search engines. That’s because the more links that a page receives, the quicker it will be found and crawled.
With the viral potential of social media posts, this is a golden opportunity.
Are all social media channels equal in their ability to influence SEO?
I don’t mean to dance around the question, but it depends.
For example:
The privacy settings on your profiles can affect whether your content surfaces in search results.
Facebook is especially known for keeping data from Google. Many of the links on Twitter are also not followed by Google.
It means that the first step to an effective social media strategy should be to optimize your profiles for visibility.
That includes toggling your accessibility settings and making use of relevant keywords.
Facebook is the main culprit, so I’ll show you how.
Step #1 – Go to the general settings on your Facebook page.
Step #2 – Explore all the settings. Many of them are related to visibility. Ensure that your page, updates, and posts are visible to everyone.
Let’s double back to which social media network has the most impact on SEO.
While this is not definitive, you may be surprised to know it’s not one of the major channels like Facebook.
Experiments have shown that Google+ has the most influence on how quickly posts are crawled.
It makes perfect sense.
Google+ is owned by Google, which means their data is completely accessible.
Here’s how you can hack Google+ for SEO capital.
- Optimize your Google+ profile to include detailed information about your business.
- Make connections on Google+, engage with the community, and increase your influence.
- Share your blog content on your profile and in relevant Google+ groups.
- Publish posts directly on…
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