SEO is deeply interconnected with online marketing strategies, but to repeat, there are some strategies that only meant for search optimization purposes. The majority of the SEO techniques, both on-site and off-site, double as divergent strategies; for instance, arranging your URL structure helps Google in properly indexing and understanding your site but also in assisting users to navigate. And, content marketing increases your professed relevance and authority in Google but also improves your reputation among your readers.
Most of these consequences are well understood, even by relative newbies’ of the SEO industry. However, there is one “diverging” strategy bounded by misconceptions and prevailing myths of social media. SEO and social media marketing are tightly associated, as a lot of people have written, but precisely how are social media and SEO linked?
Does putting posts on a regular basis on social media channels boost your website’s rankings?
Is it not viable to rank without social media?
The short answer to these two questions is “No,” but let’s dig a little deeper into what social media is and isn’t as a harmonizing SEO strategy. To simplify, there are three big roles that social media can play as an SEO promoting agent:
Role1# Raw Information Repository and Web Real Estate
Firstly, let’s know how important is information for social media and how can it influence your search visibility. Opposing the accepted belief, the information that you post on social media is once in a blue moon, if ever, used by Google, and doesn’t aggressively increase the authority of your domain–even when linked to your website are incorporated within the posts. Yet, there are a handful of exemptions and a handful of ways this information can be helpful to you.
Understand the fact that Google treats some social content, unlike other social content. For instance, some social media platforms, like Twitter, are completely indexed by Google. You might have observed an indexed tweet or two, showing in your search results if you were searching for a news occurrence or information relating to it. Other platforms are not indexed in any way. Due to this, it is possible that a few of your social posts will be indexed by Google, giving you benefit in the search visibility if your tweets are applicable to user searches. However, don’t get too happy listening to this because more than 96 % of all tweets go unindexed as they have low authoritative value.
It’s also viable that your social profiles can help in giving users more precise information, albeit in a roundabout way. When Google calculates your local rank and gives information to users, it depends on an external network of different third-party review sites and directories. A lot of these directories, in turn, get their information from different web sources (counting your social platforms). This is why all social profiles can offer you some edge when it comes to visibility and accurateness in online listings.
Role2# Social Indicators
Social signs are another area ripened with fallacies. It’s generally believed that having an article shared multiple times increases that article’s rank in Google search engine, but not so quick- social indicators don’t consider the number of times users on a social network shared a bit from their own newsfeeds. In its place, it only checks the number of people who have shared it directly from your on-site page through social share buttons–something Google can perfectly gauge.
Nevertheless, these social signals are not something that can make or break factors in a page’s rankings. The trustworthiness and quality of your content, your inbound links, and your domain authority are all significantly more important. There is, although, a way that the popularity of your article on social networks can facilitate your rankings.
Role3# More Perceptibility and More Inbound Links
This is definitely the most important way that social media can help your SEO campaign. As you most likely know, inbound links are the most dependable authority builders in the SEO world but as long as you earn them naturally. No doubt it’s difficult to earn them without building them directly with guest posts or other sources.
Another way to increase the number of inbound links your website receives is by just increasing the number of people who comes across your content. Assuming that the quality of your content is top-notch, 1 in 500 people might link to your page. Consequently, multiplying your audience by 5,000 will earn you 10 new inbound links, all-natural and that too from all different sources. Theoretically, social media is not accountable for this effect; it is only enabling situations that allow this effect to amplify in frequency, but it’s still a very crucial part of your long-term strategy.
Yet again, this social media role is totally dependent on your capability to produce content that people really want to link to. If your content is link-worthy, you will have no difficulty in increasing the base of your audience sooner or later. This leads to acquiring more people to share your content, and finally earning more inbound links with each fresh piece of content you syndicate.
To Conclude
There are some slight semantic differences at work here. You can say that social media promotes your rankings because it enables more people to perceive your brand, which can multiply the number of inbound links suggesting your site, which in turn increases your influence as well. However, you can’t say that social media impinges on your rankings directly and this is something Google has legitimately said a lot of times.
Gain knowledge from these lessons by SEO-social duo, remain active on social media, and by no means rely too seriously on any one strategy to elevate your rankings.
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