Social media and SEO or search engine optimization are both important strategies for online marketing. These strategies help businesses to increase brand awareness and direct more traffic to their website. Businesses leverage social media and SEO on their own. But are these two strategies related? There is a lot of debate over whether social media has an impact on SEO.
According to Google, social signals like liking, retweeting, or followers do not influence SEO rankings. The reason being that the credibility of the author or website can be questionable. Things like followers, likes or retweets can be manipulated. So social media cannot directly influence SEO rankings. However, there are certain social media factors that can prove useful for your SEO efforts.
Let’s take a look at how social media can have an impact on your SEO.
Sharing Content
Social media can help you in your content marketing efforts. If you are creating content like blogs on your website, then sharing it on social media can give it more visibility. Content is a great tool to attract leads to your website. Social media can help you get more leads to your website. In addition to leads it can also help you get backlinks.
When you share your content on social platforms it gives you an opportunity to get backlinks. If other content creators use your content and link back to it, you can gain backlinks for your website. Backlinks coming from credible websites can help you boost your SEO rankings. Backlinks help you build authority and credibility. If your content is referenced by other websites, then Google determines it as trustworthy. Sharing fresh, quality and unique content can give you opportunities to reach a wide network of people and earn backlinks.
Hence sharing content on social platforms is important. It does not matter which platform you choose. Sharing content on social media can help you get links from other websites.
Optimize your social media profiles
If people look for your brand name, they are definitely going to find your social media profile in the search results. Social media profiles are always on the top of the search results. A brand’s social media profiles are always seen in the search results page. Your audiences will click on your social profiles, just like they would click on your website.
Social media profiles are important for search engines and they help you gain credibility. When people see your social accounts, they can understand your brand better. It is important to optimize your social media profiles with the correct information about your business. Use the right keywords related to your products and services. Complete your profiles giving as much information you can so that your audience find all the information they are looking for.
Using hashtags
Just like you use keywords in your content to help it rank better, you can also use keywords to make your content more visible on social media. Using hashtags can help people find your post on a particular topic. Whenever you post on social media ensure that your use hashtags along with the important keywords. If a user is looking for a particular topic, they will use a hashtag before a keyword. These hashtags help them find content relevant to that keyword.
By including hashtags in your posts, you can attract more traffic to your website. Hashtags can index your content and display it in the relevant search results. This practice helps you reach audiences outside your follower list who are interested in the content you offer. This is an opportunity to gain more followers who may be curious about your business’s products or services.
Add social sharing buttons
Include social media sharing buttons in your blogs to encourage users to share your content on social media. Adding social sharing buttons can benefit your SEO strategies in two ways. First, it can give your content more exposure and help you get more leads who are interested in your business. Second, it can give you opportunities to get backlinks from other websites.
Place social sharing buttons where they are easily visible to the users. Display these buttons on the top and bottom of your blog. When users go through your entire blog it is convenient for them to simply click share. Apart from blogs you can also place these buttons on other sharable web pages like case studies or job postings.
Build your network
Building a network is an important aspect of your social media efforts. Increasing your list of followers or connections does not directly impact your SEO. However, it opens up many opportunities that you can leverage for SEO. As discussed above, social media can help you gain backlink for your website. In addition, it can also create opportunities for guest blogging and link-building.
Through social media you can come across professionals and content creators from your industry. This can open dialogues and conversations that you can turn into opportunities. You can find experts for guest blogging or also write a guest blog for another website. This can allow you to gain backlinks from other credible websites. Moreover, it can help you get more traffic for your website.
Google’s algorithm is complex, and we cannot fully understand these ranking factors. Even though according to Google social media does not affect ranking factors directly, social media can help in many ways. With social media you can see the long-term benefits that can contribute to your SEO strategy.
The ultimate results you want to gain from SEO is more visibility and traffic on your website. This is what social media also helps you achieve. Social media and SEO can work together to help you get the best results for your business.
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