5 Reasons Social Media is important for SEO

What exactly does social media have to in relation to SEO? At MWI we hear these questions frequently from our the current and potential clients. Although social media has been a growing channel for marketing in recent times, many companies haven’t yet begun to benefit from the potential of it. This is particularly important when you’re investing in search engine optimization. The creation and management of social media accounts are essential to aid in SEO efforts, though their benefits aren’t immediately apparent. Of the many reasons to consider the use of social media in your online strategy Here are five reasons it’s important for SEO.

1) Social Media Signals
It’s not a secret that Google, Bing and other major search engines have been using online chat as part of their ranking algorithms for quite some period of time. Whenever people tweet, like, comment or share an article that is known as a social engagement. Content that has more engagements on social media will be able to show more social signals. These social signals are used by search engines to determine the quality of the content. This is a way for search engines to decide what people find most useful and what their algorithm deems as high-quality. If the content you’re looking at is receiving lots of social interaction the content can be identified.

2) Link Building
There are no more days of going out and soliciting websites to add links to yours. In the wake of Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithms, SEOs are forced to perform link building in the old fashioned way – create high quality content that is worthy of linking. How do you reach websites who are willing to link to your content, if you ask them directly, which would be thought to be “unnatural”? Social media is your answer. Social media allows you to expose your content to people who are willing to link to it in the event that it’s worth linking to. These people may also be able to share your content with their networks, further increasing the influence of your content.

3.) Content Amplification
It doesn’t matter how high-quality the content you publish, Abapdocu.com/index.php/User:LorrineWienholt it’s unlikely to be popular unless you amplify it. Email marketing can be an effective method to increase the reach of your the content you create, but it won’t be able to reach the people on your list of marketing contacts. It is possible to reach new audiences via social media. If you post your content to your followers, they will spread it to their own followers in the event that they find it helpful. They will then also share it with their friends to increase your reach. In return, you earn lots of relevant traffic including inbound links, social signals and brand awareness All of these are utilized by search engines to determine the quality of the content.

content amplification lifecycle

4.) Brand Awareness and Signals
Brand identity and awareness can inform search engines an awful lot about the overall quality of your website and the degree to which it should be considered reliable in their ranking algorithms. Aside from amplifying your content social media also aids in create brand awareness. Google refers to this as co-citation. These co-citations are built through social media to improve Google’s trust and help with search results that are branded.

5.) Social Indexing
Since the search engines are able to index social media sites and display them in search results pages. This allows your brand to show up in search results for specific queries that aren’t only restricted to your business’s website. This is even more effective. Individual tweets from Twitter were once searchable and included in search results. This allowed your website to rank higher on the results of a search. The program was only temporary, however it was a short-term solution, and Google stopped it after a few months. Google will once again show tweets in search results, so it’s important to leverage it for getting your content ranked.