SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an essential part of any well thought out digital marketing strategy. It’s a great long-term strategy that continues to bring in results well into the future. When you think of SEO, you might think of content creation, link building, etc. Social media signals aren’t something that comes to mind when you’re focusing on SEO. But social media signals can have a pretty positive impact on your SEO as well.
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What are Social Media Signals?
You can think of social media signals as an affirmation of your website or blog by these platforms’ users. Most of these signals are in the forms of likes, shares, and comments.
The more social media signals you have, the better it is for your SEO. Yes, positive reactions or vanity metrics as they are called in the industry, on Facebook and comments are great to have, but you should really focus on social shares if you want to have a meaningful impact on your site’s SEO.
Here is how social media signals help uplift your SEO:
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Improve your online presence and visibility.
Social media is all about building a presence and establishing your unique identity. But how does that help with SEO? Well, first of all, it helps raise brand awareness. Online visibility is essential for websites. It becomes even more critical when you have an ecommerce site or have digital products that you want to sell.
With social media, you can get a consistent increase in brand awareness. Even if your content does not go viral, you can still expect a trickle of awareness spreading every time you post something on social media. If your content is valuable and on point, then you can expect more and more people to share your content. If people share your content on these social media platforms, then you can also expect people to react to the content. This is a butterfly effect of sorts.
Once your content starts getting traction, your business will begin to build a name for itself. Over time, as more people start to find and learn about your business and the value it provides, they’ll start searching for your website, thereby increasing your SEO significantly.
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Increase in traffic.
Social media can boost your traffic by leaps and bounds. Site traffic is a super important metric for SEO. Without traffic, what use would the content on your website be? Getting traffic on your site should be your topmost priority. Regardless of the core purpose of your site, if you’re not getting people on to your site, almost all of your SEO efforts will be in vain.
There are two main approaches to generating traffic from social media. The first traffic generating approach has to deal with creating content that is evergreen, but what does evergreen content mean? Well, evergreen content has to deal with topics that people will want to know about for the foreseeable future. You can create evergreen content on a variety of topics and problems. One of the best ways to do this is to list down all of the most common problems that people in your niche have to face on a regular basis. It would be best if you manage to list down topics that people search for on a regular.
Doing this will help you create content that is not only evergreen but is also make your website attract customers back to your site. These evergreen topics and blog posts are great if you want to build an audience and generate trickles of traffic for your site. On various social media platforms, these kinds long lasting and evergreen posts do tend to work, but only to a limit. The other kind of content you should think about is viral content. Viral content is super tricky to make and well for lack of a better word, make viral. While certain things can help your content go viral, you’ll ultimately have to try your luck.
Viral content that is focused on trending/current news tends to generate a significant amount of traffic for a short amount of time. Creating viral content is a great way to raise awareness about your site. Once you start cashing in on enough viral news, you’ll be well known in your niche.
By sharing these kinds of posts on social media, you can drive traffic to your website. Make sure to include a copy that asks people to share the post and visit the site. Also ensure that the traffic you do generate needs to be taken care of and looked after which is why you should use a live chat app.
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Increase in dwell time.
Dwell time might not come to your mind when people mention social media signals. But dwell time is another significant metric that you need to focus on if you want to get the most out of your SEO. Dwell time means the amount of time people spend on a page present on your website. More dwell time tells search engines that this website has valuable content, so people choose to stay on the site for longer.
But how do social media signals contribute to dwelling time?
First off, if a friend or influencer shares a post on social media, then the people who see the post will be more inclined to click on the post and go through the content. If you think about it, Google makes it a point to push content that people will enjoy. And there are several factors Google considers before displaying results.
By going through most of the content on a particular web page on your site, your new visitor might spend a good bit of time on your website. And if your site has other valuable content and properly placed a call to action buttons, new visitors will be more effectively engaged on your site.
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More backlinks.
Getting backlinks is an essential part of SEO. A big chunk of an SEO professional’s time goes to implementing strategies that help build links for the website. The more links or backlinks your website has, the more authoritative it will be. Almost all social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or any popular platform has a super high domain authority. If we were still living in the time of web 2.0, SEO link builders would start spamming and inserting links, but things are different now.
Now one thing that we have to get clear is that at this point in time, Google does not consider links from social media platforms to contribute to SEO directly. All of the top gurus and experts will tell you that links from social media will not boost your SEO, but most of the time, social backlinks really do help.
But when we get passed this, we can appreciate what links from social media platforms can do for your website. The links you get from social media help contribute to your website’s traffic, which is a big plus for your website. So even if the SEO experts are right, you’ll still drive traffic to your site, which is not a bad deal at all.
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Use social profiles to uplift SEO.
Social profiles can also be used to improve your site’s SEO score. Think about it. When a super popular influencer decides to closely partner up with a business or brand, oftentimes, they’ll include a link to the site everywhere possible.Since these influencers are followed by thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, anything they choose to associate themselves with is indeed going to get a lot of limelight and press.
Not only will the brand’s site be able to benefit from the added attention, but it will also benefit from the endorsement of the influencer. Trust is something that search engines value, which is the reason you’ll see a lot of websites showing their TrustPilot scores on their website.
The more people you can get to endorse your website or online business, the better it will be for your site’s SEO score. It’s a constant struggle to provide great customer service or partner with the right people, but all of these efforts will ultimately help you make your website stand out from the crowd and above in the SERP.
Conclusion:
Social media signals are a vital part of building your online brand. These days, it is imperative to have a valid social media presence. SEO is a great way to start marketing your business online. Once you start getting your feet wet with SEO, you can then move onto the less common strategies in the world of digital marketing. Social media signals aren’t something that a lot of SEO practitioners are too focused on, so this can be a truly remarkable opportunity for you.
As people are spending more and more time on these social media platforms, you can expect that search engines will perhaps start giving them more significant importance in the future.If you develop a habit at this very moment to give importance to social media, then you’ll do wonders when things do start shifting towards social media and the value it can bring to your website and SEO.
Author: Hamzah Adil is currently working as a digital marketing executive for a startup that has developed a live chat app called SwiftChat.
