Anyone who works with SEO will have seen that, often, high social media share counts often lead to high organic search rankings
Anyone who works with SEO will know that high social media share counts often lead to high organic search rankings. Given that Google themselves have said social sharing isn’t a direct ranking factor on many different occasions, why is this the case?
In today’s guide, we’re going to explore some of the important things everyone needs to know about social media and SEO. An emphasis on why high performance in the former can result in better performance with the latter.
Key Things To Understand About Social Media & SEO Click To TweetWhat are social shares?
First of all, it’s important to understand what social sharing is. In essence, it’s the number of people that have seen you post on social media, clicked on it, and then shared it with their friends.
While there may not be a direct correlation between the amount of shares you receive and your SEO ranking, some search experts believe there is a relationship due to engagement.
When people engage with your social media and click through to your website, it counts as an organic visit. Every organic visit you receive improves your ranking by a tiny percentage. In short, social media links are thought to be credible backlinks.
How to get more shares?
Publishing engaging content is a great way to encourage people to share your work, which in turn sends signals to the likes of Google that you are creating popular work. But what is the best type of content to produce? Advice from Katapult Marketing is pretty clear on the matter.
This company has been providing SEO services to various big and small companies and suggest that videos produce 5x the engagement of other media. Those are impressive statistics in anyone’s book. Quality of video and production, as well as delivery of your message, is important. Video is a must for seeking more engagement on social media.
Do social media profiles have an impact?
While your social media profiles won’t have a direct impact on your website they are still beneficial. When you have an active and engaging social media profile for your company Google will list it in its SERPs. This will give you more coverage. A potential visitor could find your business via Google and end up on your website, Facebook page, or Pinterest channel, for example.
Social channels are also a great way to let people get to know your company in a less formal way. It makes sense to invest some time and energy into posting engaging and interesting information on every channel.
Social media IS search
Finally, don’t forget that many people search for things on social media these days – and each channel is, in fact, an opportunity to improve your SEO. Never forget that search engine optimization is just about appeasing Google. Other search engines such as Bing can provide you with valuable customers, of course. But you should also be thinking about optimizing for social media, too.
