Does social media actually help you rank higher? It’s a question as old as time –er, as old as SEO anyway. The answer is: yes. BUT, not in the way that you may be thinking. Not in a direct way. That, however doesn’t make it any less helpful in SERP’s. In fact, social media should be an integral part of your SEO efforts because of all of the indirect – and free – ways it does help you rank higher. Coined simply, Social SEO, here’s how SEO and social media work together.

Social Media is the best way to promote your content

Part of any solid SEO strategy is creating great content on your website that provides value for the end user. So, we create all of this fantastic content and sometimes it doesn’t get very many people consuming it. Social media is the best outlet to promote all of this content so people can discover it. Serve your content to people instead of making a user find it themselves. This in turn can lead to the next benefit…

Social media shares can lead to link building

One of the more important aspects of SEO is gaining high quality links back to your website. No, links incoming from social media sites don’t count as backlinks in Google’s eyes BUT it does put your content out into the internet where influencers are always looking for great content to share. If they find your content and then in turn share it on their own website or blog you’ve just gained a high-quality backlink. More shares = more opportunities for backlinks. The rub here however is that you need to create authoritative, high-quality content or else you won’t get those shares thus not benefiting.

Social media is great at increasing page views and engagement

While those links from social media to your website don’t directly count as authentic backlinks they DO help with page views and engagement. If you have someone land on your website from social media and enjoy the content they are looking at they are more likely to hang out on the page or navigate to other content. Thus, helping both your bounce rates and time-on-site engagement which ARE important SEO ranking factors for Google.

You can increase your brand awareness for free (or cheap)

At first glance this may seem as more of a marketing advantage than an SEO one. In reality it’s actually both. By increasing your reputation on social media, with increased engagement of your content you can dramatically increase the number of branded searches users will perform in Google. As you continue to build more and more branded searches, the more likely you are going to start to rank for those non-branded keywords you are trying to target. The reason for this is Google is seeing people know and trust your brand/website so your authority will then start to rise. And to add a little extra boost to your brand, social media advertising is generally cheap and easy to target people for even more increased brand awareness. For as little as $5 you can reach 1000’s of users.

Your profiles and posts can show up in Google

Go to Google right now and type in your company name. What’s the first thing that shows up? If I were a betting man your social media accounts are going to be on the first page of results (if you have them and are remotely active). That’s because Google treats your social media profiles just like any other page on the internet. Which is why it’s important to have your social media profile pages affairs in order.

Further, you may also see a number of different posts from different social media sites. Twitter, for example has a partnership with Google which allows them to display tweets in line with the search results. That means if you have content on your social media account that has to do with what the searchers query is you have a legitimate chance to show up. YouTube as well is an important one. Because they are Google owned that means they’re going to show you results from the video sharing behemoth. And believe it or not, you can optimize your YouTube videos in much the same way you can your website in order to get them on page 1.

Use SEO and Social Media in tandem for the best results

We have a lot of clients that choose to only stay in one marketing lane thinking that will lead to success. But what we try to get across to them is that for optimal success with your online presence using SEO and social media together produces the greatest results. Separate they are good, but bring them together and they work in harmony.

webFEAT Complete for example is a full-service agency that provides both SEO and social media in-house. Which means we are able to work cohesively to provide maximum exposure for you and your company. Check us out and see what we can do to help you achieve maximum success for your brand or company.
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