Social Media to Boost SEO
If you want a strong social media strategy, you simply can't ignore SEO.
Everyone understands that a good social media strategy is the holy grail for businesses; it molds the perception of a brand, carries the voice, creates the appeal, and as a result, increases revenue. There are a few fundamentals that can help enhance the strategy, but SEO, or search engine optimization, is hardly ever considered. Big mistake! Here’s why.
I’ll start by stating that social media and SEO are heavily tied to each other. SEO data can help improve your social efforts, and social media can help with the search rankings.
1. Sharing Can Lead to Links and Higher Rankings
Social sharing directly increases the visibility of a page. That increased visibility means it may get noticed by a creator of content, such as a blogger, journalist, or author. That creator may mention it in a subsequent piece of content. If they linked to it, that page is then more likely to rank.
For sharing to affect rankings, a lot of things have to go right…
2. The Correlation Between Social Media and “User Interaction Signals”
Imagine this: a visitor searches for a phrase. They now see a search results page with 10 blue links. They click one and land at a page that doesn’t seem to help them. They hit the back button. That’s a bounce (a one-page visit).
Then they click another link on the search results page and find a more helpful page. They stay for a few minutes. Maybe they click around…
Google was watching. Remember, they own the search engine, but they also probably own the browser and Analytics on both sites They know that the searcher stayed on one page much longer than the other.
3. How Google+ Activity Directly Affects Rankings
There are two ways in which rankings are directly affected by Google+ activity. They both rely on the searcher being logged into their Google+ account.
- Google+ posts rank in Google
Actual Google+ posts rank almost instantly for phrases included in the post, for anyone who has added you to a circle. This is why smart G+ users write posts with “titles” which are usually bolded headlines at the top of the post. Text is bolded in Google by putting asterisks before and after the text.
- +1’d content ranks higher in personalized search results
Google search results are personalized for people who are logged in to Google+, provided they have connected with people who have interacted with content. Rankings are directly affected. Here’s how it works:
If Jill puts Jack in a circle, and Jack +1’s a page about buckets. That page will rank higher when Jill searches for “buckets.” She will also see that Jack likes this page, right there in the search results.
