Wondering how someone really feels about your business? Social media has become a go to for public opinion. Many businesses have started looking to social media sites to guide its business and marketing strategies, including Google. With the core of social media being that of social interaction, where users create and exchange content and trends take shape, search engines have begun looking to social media for ideas on how to improve its search algorithms. SEO and social media can no longer operate separately because social media is now playing a vital role in SEO.
Traditionally, SEO focused on content, website structure and linking, but it has increasingly become more about branding, content, and building relationships, which is the core of social media. It’s imperative that SEO and social media work together in order to achieve the desired outcome of your online marketing efforts, i.e. rankings, engagement and ultimately, leads. One without the other is like, peanut butter without chocolate; it’s just not worth it!
Wondering how social media directly impacts SEO? Explained below are the four areas where social media is currently a factor:
- Traffic and Links: With a solid social media strategy in place, it can be a strong driving force for clicks to your website. If you have built an organic following on social media, then once they land on your website the potential for backlinks grows with the increase in traffic attributed from social media.
- Ranking: Your social media channels rank high for your brand terms within the search engines, allowing your brand to cover more real estate on the first page.
- Personalized Search: Google’s personalized search takes in to consideration your Google+ activity as part of its search algorithms. Not everyone uses personalized searches, but the people who do will see a direct impact in their results due to activity on social media.
- Audience: Social media if anything, is known to widen a businesses audience, especially ones who produce high quality content. The more your social audience grows the greater chance there is of users searching for your business within the search engines. This action will ultimately influence your rankings due to the impending search popularity.
There is an undeniable tie between SEO and social media so if you’re doing one without the other, it’s definitely time to start considering revising your online strategy. Just think how much stronger your brand presence and marketing efforts would be if SEO and social media were working simultaneously. If you have any more questions or would like to begin integrating your online marketing efforts reach out to Spark; we would be more than happy to bridge that gap for your business and increase its impact online!
