The beautiful thing about digital marketing is that one hand feeds the other in most cases. One successful piece of a campaign can often cause another piece to find success as well.
We’re going to explore the relationship between social media and SEO today, giving you some insight into how both can benefit your business. Further, we’ll look at how to fine-tune your efforts so that your social media presence can aid your Google rankings.
Let’s get started.
The Social Media and SEO Connection
The first thing to note about this relationship is that there’s no direct way that social media makes an impact on SEO rankings. Google doesn’t list the number of social media followers, or even a social media presence as one of its factors when choosing how to rank sites.
That said, there are a lot of opportunities to use social media as a tool to improve some of Google’s ranking factors. In many cases, those benefits have to do with getting your content out there in front of more people.
1. Social Media Pushes Content
A big piece of any search engine optimization campaign is the presence of content. Posting a good deal of quality content gives you the chance to rank for a variety of keywords in your niche.
The difficulty is getting your posts to rank so that anybody sees them. When users engage with your posts, they bring along a number of positive ranking factors and indicators that Google users to rank your site.
For example, the more people that spend a significant amount of time on your site, the better you’ll do. You can’t quite get those factors unless people see your pages.
Social media saves the day by offering a direct way to reach a committed audience. The followers you have on social media, you can assume, have some sort of attraction or interest in your product. If you have a decent social media following, the links you post to content will bring them to your actual site.
When they’re there, the interactions they have on your site will count just like any others would. Traffic from interested users will give you a healthy boost in rankings.
So, it’s important to post your new content on social media and make it engaging enough for people to follow through and click it.
Opportunities for Shares and Ads
Another benefit of social media sharing is that your content can get picked up and shared by your users. That opens up your audience to an exponentially higher number of people if it keeps getting shared.
You’ll start to see increased sales or conversions from that activity, but you’ll see even more positive SEO metrics from the users that visit your site. A popular post might boost rankings across all of the pages on your site.
Further, you can use social media marketing to place your content in front of your target audience. This is an effective way to get the word out about your business and increase sales a great deal.
Again, even if those individuals don’t follow through and make a purchase, the fact that they’re visiting your site will improve your SEO rankings.
2. Posts Hang Around Longer
The content you make for your website might not have too much time that it’s active. A new post is great, and it can stick around and draw traffic for a while, but it’s often the case that they sink down into obscurity after a while.
New content and keywords come around, and you just keep making more content to fill the space. That said, using social media is a great way to revitalize those posts and keep them relevant.
Sharing a post or advertising can bring it a lot more traffic and continue to generate better rankings.
When you think about the time and effort that go into producing a good post, extended time is really valuable. You might pay a pretty penny to have someone write a great post for you, only to find that it brings results for one month.
Working that post into a social media sharing cycle can keep it alive for months, even years after the time that it’s posted.
3. Brand Recognition and Local Results
It’s possible for your social media profiles to show up in a variety of searches. Even though your popularity doesn’t factor into the rankings that Google has, Google might utilize your profiles when your company is searched by name.
Further, you might see that your profiles are utilized in local searches. Social media pages tend to have more accurate information and they might be the hub of information that users are looking for when they’re making a local search.
So, working on a comprehensive and accurate social media profile might not be a bad idea. This isn’t so much a method of getting better rankings, but it’s important to note that Google is aware of your social media page and might use it in its search results.
This is just an incentive to keep your social media pages active and ripe with your current business information and product offerings.
So, What’s The Verdict?
There’s a strong connection between SEO and social media. While that connection might not be direct, it’s very potent and you should use it to increase your business’ success.
If you’re struggling to get the success you’re looking for on social media, don’t sweat it too much. There are a lot of resources and tools you can use to build that following up and start seeing results. The same goes for SEO.
That said, there’s a lot to be said about working with the professionals on your digital marketing campaign.
Need a Little Help With Your Campaign?
Social media and SEO seem like they should be intuitive factors that business owners can work out, but they’re a lot more complex than they seem. Some help from professionals can be a game-changer when it comes to the efficacy of your campaign.
We’re here to help. Contact us to learn more about what a professional SEO agency can do for your business.
