Social media can have a big impact on your rankings. Building a comprehensive web presence that leads back to your website is a great way to build your site’s authority and drive traffic. Being active on networks such as Twitter and Facebook is a popular way to disseminate content, build your brand’s identity and interact with customers. These channels have become vital for business in a number of ways and with SEO becoming more about the parts than simply the sum, it is important to maintain high-quality interactions across your social media profiles.
Link building
Links used to be the only thing Google cared about, but now that has changed. Low-quality and fake links are more likely to get your site penalised than improve the rankings and it is better to concentrate on using your social media networks for engagement. When people share your content they are helping develop your backlink profile, so the better your tweets and posts, the better chance you have of improving your rankings.
While Facebook and Twitter will tag the links you post with your content as “no follow”, they are still important. The will drive traffic to your site and help it convert customers, it will also encourage sharing among your followers. However, the link you include in your profile information will not be tagged “no follow” and will help give your site authority. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and the other networks, have huge numbers of users and are powerful sites to be linked from.
Followers
Social media lives and dies on interaction. This has a knock-on effect and can impact your rankings. Having a large number of followers who interact with you regularly is a good signal that will help the algorithm determine that your site is valuable. However, this can only occur if you are active on social media. It can be a time-consuming process, but by regularly contributing quality content and interacting with your audience, you raise the legitimacy of your site and Google likes this.
This is only possible when you have a genuine follower base though. The profiles that claim they will give your 10,000 followers for $5 will generally do more harm to your profile than good. Facebook and Twitter consider these attempts to “game” their product as contrary to their rules, or at least the spirit of their rules, and will penalise you if you’re caught buying followers. These followers are low quality from a Google perspective as well. They won’t provide any genuine interaction and fake likes on Facebook are certain to also get you a Google penalty.
Instead, build your followers the old-fashioned way. ‘Like’ other users’ content, comment on their tweets and posts, retweet and share, and generally be an active participant in the process. Algorithm updates like Panda are aimed at rewarding quality and punishing short cuts, so while it may be a more time consuming way to promote your business, brand and website, it will pay dividends in the future.
Keywords
Keywords are generally considered the phrases and terms used on your website. However, they are also important when posting on social media. With Facebook posts and Twitter tweets now appearing in Google results, optimising your posts is a good way to become more visible. For this to work, you need to ensure your content is shareable and searchable.
Privacy is a huge issue across the world of social media and while it is advisable for personal users to make their pages and profiles impregnable, it is not so for businesses. You want to make all your accounts public and easy to find. A business relies on its accessibility and with so many options open to consumers, making your product or service an effort to find will result in missed opportunities.
Social media marketing will only become more important
SEO and social media’s relationship is still in its infancy and as both search engines and social networks develop, the integration will become tighter. It is vital to consider social media a part of your SEO campaign, regardless of how big your business or how well you are currently ranking without it.
Top comments (0)