5 Reasons Why Social Media Is Essential For SEO

What does social media have to offer SEO? At MWI we hear lots of questions from our current and prospective clients. Social media is rapidly growing channel for marketing that most businesses have only recently begun to take advantage of over the last few years, however it's vital to take advantage of it - especially if you're investing resources in SEO. Although the benefits of social media may not be immediately obvious, they are vital for SEO support. Below are five reasons why social media is essential for SEO.

1) Social Media Signals
It's no secret that Google, Bing, and other search engines make use of online conversation as part of their algorithm for ranking. Whenever people tweet, like, comment or share the content they like, this is called a social engagement. A piece of content that has the highest number of social engagements will be able to show more social signals. These social signals are used by search engines to determine the quality of the content. It's a method of determining what content people find useful in comparison to what their algorithm determines to be of good quality. A piece of content could also be indexed instantly if it's receiving a lot of social engagement.

2) Link Building
Long gone are the days of soliciting websites to link to yours. Google's Panda/Penguin algorithm has forced SEOs to linkbuild using the old method: make high-quality content that is relevant. But how do you reach sites that would be willing to link to your content if they are not directly approached as an "unnatural" link building practice? Social media is your answer. Social media enables you to put your content in front of relevant groups of people who may be attracted to link to it when it's worthy of linking to. These people will be able to share your content with other people and increase your reach.

3) Content Amplification
You could create any good-quality content that you wish to, but it won't gain any traction without amplifying it. Marketing via email is great method to boost the content you create, but it won't reach people in your list of marketing contacts. Social media allows you to reach new audiences with your content. If you share your content, your following will share it with their following when they are satisfied with the content. This will cause them to share it with their following, further increasing your reach. In return, you earn lots of relevant traffic, inbound links, social signals , and brand زيادة مشاهدات اليوتيوب awareness All of which are utilized by search engines to judge the quality of the content.

content amplification lifecycle

4.) Brand Awareness and Signals
Search engines may use your brand's reputation and image to assess the credibility of your website and how trustworthy it should be within their ranking algorithms. Social media can help build brand awareness and increases the quality of your content. Google refers to this as co-citation. Building these co-citations using social media can improve Google's trust and confidence in your website , and will also help with branded search queries.

5) Social Indexing
Since search engines index social media profiles which means they show as search results. This allows your brand to show up in search results for specific queries that aren't only restricted to your business's website. This is even more effective. Individual Tweets from Twitter were once indexed and shown in search results as well which gave another means for your website to be ranked in search. It was only for a short time, however the deal was ended when 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.