Despite what many marketers express, social media can play a significant role in search engine optimization. Social Platforms send ranking signals to Google and also greatly improve the potential to gain influential backlinks from other websites to your site’s pages. Social media channels are essentially search engines themselves, with more and more people using social networks to find what they are looking for, especially product information. Social media profiles themselves have the potential to rank on search engines, so well-optimized pages are important.
How Social Media Impacts SEO
- Social sharing can drive traffic to websites – They key here is quality not quantity. Links to quality content can potentially result in engagement such as shares, likes, and comments. It also encourages social media users to visit your website. If users stay on your site and explore, click through to other pages, etc., search engines consider this a sign of relevancy.
- Social media profiles can rank in search engines – Have you ever typed in the name of a brand and their Twitter, YouTube or Facebook was among the search engine results? Along with the brand website, it is likely that social media pages were also present. If the company can rank both their website and social pages, it takes up more space on the results page, which is known to increase click-through to brand websites and help businesses beat out potential competitors in terms of visibility.
- Capturing external links is easier with social media- One of the biggest factors in SEO are backlinks because search engines consider this a sign of usefulness and relevancy. Backlinks are when other sites link back to your site. Consider this part of SEO as a popularity contest. The more quality backlinks your site generates, the higher its potential spot on the results page. Sharing your content on social media increases the chances of developing backlinks.
- Social Media can boosts brand awareness- Facebook currently has nearly 2 billion active users and Twitter currently has over 325 million active users. These numbers illustrate just how important social media platforms can be for generating brand awareness.
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