How Social Media can Improve Your SEO?
We are only halfway through 2021, and Google has already received 360 billion searches this year. Further, Google accounts for over 70% of all global desktop search traffic.
If you haven’t taken your SEO strategy seriously, now is the time to do so. But this article isn’t about creating an effective SEO strategy, but leveraging social media to improve your SEO.
But, in the first place, is it even possible?
Well, let’s get a few things straight before I serve the main course.
Social media doesn’t directly affect your SEO, nor is it a ranking factor. (Huh, then why this post?)
Wait a minute. I said there’s no direct correlation between the two, but the numerous benefits of social media do feed into SEO.
Back in 2020, Danny Sullivan, co-founder of Search Engine Land, reported that Google had social signals that helped it rank organic results.
In 2014, Matt Cutts, former leader of Google’s webspam team, said Google does not treat social pages profiles as a ranking signal but rather as their own organic search results.
Let’s not make things complex for you and get down to the business! So, how can social media improve your SEO?
Opportunities to Gain Backlinks
According to Search Engine Land, backlinks are one of the top two criteria considered by Google’s ranking algorithm while ranking pages.
Now, you must be thinking about how social media can help with backlinks?
Posting quality content on social media consistently can be a gamechanger for your link-building strategy.
Normally, you have to approach relevant, high authority sites in your niche for guest posting. Buying links has become a norm and is considered a good investment.
But what if you don’t have to approach them, yet you get high-quality backlinks?
If your content is really good, your blog post is likely to be linked by hundreds of followers in their content.
Free backlinks, without any hassle!
Social Profiles do Rank in Search Engines
Have you ever searched for a term and found a social media profile at the top of search results? This means social media profiles can rank on search engines. Thus, you can’t limit your SEO strategy to your web content or blog posts.
If one of your profiles has been ranked on Google, you can easily direct the traffic to your site. Further, social channels feel more personal than web pages, so people are more likely to click on them.
So, while social media profiles are not a direct ranking factor, they can certainly improve SEO by sending more traffic to your website.
For e-commerce stores or online service providers, this is bonus traffic with higher chances of conversion.
Most of the users would land on your profile with buying intent. You can further direct them to the site to make a purchase or get a conversion from your Facebook page.
Social Media Profiles Build Credibility
Social media platforms have become search engines. Ask yourself, how many times have you searched for your favorite song on Facebook?
Don’t you search for your favorite athletes, speakers, and artists on Instagram?
Thousands of videos, short posts, and infographics are being shared on these platforms on a daily basis. People wind down by reading or watching something on their favorite profiles.
If you have something worth reading/watching to share, they might follow you and keep coming back. Here, too, you can direct the traffic to your website.
Plus, this regular engagement builds credibility. So people would be curious to find more about your business.
They will spend more time on your website exploring your services and thus, this prolonged stay will boost your rankings.
Boost Content Performance
Marketers spend hours and days to devise an effective content marketing strategy. Being an advertising agency in Dubai, we know how long it can take to do competitor research and gain some idea regarding content creation.
If you manage to satisfy your social audience, you can gain useful insights regarding who your target audience is what they’re interested in.
And once your social media content strategy has started to produce results, you can add the same content to your website as well.
Reviews and feedback taken from social profiles can help you find out loopholes in your service or content.
This way, you can avoid repeating the mistakes hindering your progress.
Improved Brand Awareness
What brand awareness has to do with SEO? This is part of a long-term strategy.
Put it this way. Loyal customers who only purchase from specific brands search for a certain product with a brand name.
If you have promoted your brand through social media, they are likely to search more about your product/service on Google.
The search engine will take it as a ranking signal as more and more people are searching about your brand online.
Conclusion
When you sit down to create your SEO strategy, make sure you take social media seriously. It may not impact your SEO directly, but you can leverage it to boost your visibility on SERP results.
