5 Reasons Social Media Is Essential For SEO

What do social media have to do with SEO? At MWI, we get these questions frequently from our current and prospective clients. Social media is an incredibly growing channel for marketing that most companies have only started making use of in the past few years, however it's vital to take advantage of it when you're investing resources in SEO. While the benefits of social media might not be immediately apparent, they're vital for SEO support. From the myriad of reasons to think about social media as part of your overall strategy to be online, here are 5 reasons why it is essential for SEO.

1) Social Media Signals
It's not difficult to see that Google, Bing, and other search engines make use of online conversations as part of their algorithm for ranking. When people tweet, like, comment or share a piece of content it is referred to as a social engagement. A piece of content that has the highest number of social engagements will have more social signals. Search engines analyze these social signals and consider it an element of quality when evaluating the content. It's a way to determine what content is popular with users in comparison to what their algorithm decides is of good quality. If an article receives lots of social shares, it can be instantly indexable.

2.) Link Building
Long gone are the days of going out and asking for websites to add links to yours. Google's Panda/Penguin algorithms have compelled SEOs to build links in the traditional way: create quality content that is relevant. How do you get in touch with sites that would be willing to link to your content , if they are not directly approached as an "unnatural" link building method? Social media can help. Social media allows you to share your content with relevant audiences who may be willing to link to your content, if it is worth linking to. These people will be able to share your content with other people, increasing your influence.

3.) Content Amplification
The quality of the content you publish, it won't achieve much success until you amplify it. Email marketing is an effective method to increase the reach of your content , but it can only reach those in your list of marketing contacts. Social media can help you increase the reach of your content. If you send your content out to your followers, they'll be sure to share it with their own followers when they find it useful. They will then share it with their following, further increasing your reach. You'll also get relevant traffic, inbound linking, social signals, and brand recognition These can be utilized by search engines for content assessment of quality.

content amplification lifecycle

4) Brand Awareness and Signals
Search engines may use your brand's image and recognition to judge the credibility of your website and how trustworthy it needs to be in their ranking algorithms. In addition to boosting your content social media can also help create brand awareness. Google refers to this as co-citation. These co-citations are built by using social media to boost Google's trust as well as aid with the search engine's branded searches.

5.) Social Indexing
Since search engines are able to index social media websites, they are now showing up in search results pages. This allows your company to show up in search results that include branded searches on more than just your company website. However, it's even more than that. Individual tweets from Twitter were at one time indexed and displayed in search results, too giving another opportunity to get your content noticed in search. The program was only temporary, موقع تزويد مشاهدات however it ended and Google stopped it after a few months. Google will once again show tweets in search results, so it's important to leverage it for getting your content ranked.