Social media and SEO: are they related? When we think of digital marketing, we think of both as part of the equation. But does social media marketing really help and have an impact on the results you can get from SEO?
In short, while there is no direct relation or impact made by social media on SEO results, the use of social media can aid in desired SEO results.
How does this happen? Today, we will look at a few ways that social media can have an impact on SEO.
Sharing – People post links on social media to get likes, comments and, most importantly, shares that spread the message. Obviously, outside of sharing, the most important objective from social media postings is to generate traffic to these web pages. The more you can drive traffic to your website through social media posts, the more you can increase your organic search rankings.
Profile Ranking – While direct social media posts don’t rank in search engines, the pages and profiles of social media accounts do. You may notice when you type in the name of a business that not only will you get the official website, but also links to social media pages. Businesses that are able to get their social profiles into the rankings with the website tend to be higher on the search engine results page and can eliminate competition from those spots in the process.
External Links – Websites build authority by building links. External links are the most important element of that and go a long way in achieving the success you want on search engines, notably Google. By using social media to promote a piece of content and get shares, you increase the possibility that other websites will use your link and refer back to you.
Brand Awareness – Social media plays such a big role in our lives. It gives you a large stage to present your brand and increase awareness. With millions of users on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, social media holds the key to building brand awareness in a place where people want engagement and interaction.
Local SEO – Some recent trends in SEO show that activity is done with mobile devices and focuses on local results, stores, restaurants or attractions near the location of the user. Local SEO is certainly a focus of social websites like Yelp, and offer an opportunity to show location and feedback. The more that you get reviewed, the more that the search engines notice and place you on local results pages.
All Search Engines Are Different – When you think of search engines, the first one that comes to mind is usually Google and rightfully so. Google accounts for nearly 75 percent of search engine market share. But there are other search engines that play the game as well. Bing and Yahoo are also top search engines, and each has its own algorithms and ways of ranking websites and pages.
In recent years, Google also had its own social media network called Google Plus, which will shut down in August 2019, and those profiles displayed in organic search results as well. In some cases, a Facebook post or page may generate more ranking authority on one search engine than another. Accounting for all of the search engines and their tendencies makes a difference.
Even if there is no direct connection or association between social media and SEO, there are ways to influence your results and potential success with the help of social media. The more social media platforms continue to grow, chances are the signals from social networks will become more powerful for rankings.
At Genius eCommerce, this is who we are and what we do. We stay ahead on the updates and provide tips and tricks to achieving success in eCommerce SEO. With these tips on how social media can aid that, you can be inspired to continue to put social media to use and make the most of it in your digital marketing plan.
