1. Social Media Can Boost SEO for Your Website
Although social signals including likes, follows and favorites had previously been metrics used by Google, Matt Cutts said in January 2014 that they are currently no longer looking at these numbers to determine page rankings.
But John Blaze, Digital Media Consultant at Driven Local, and Google Partner said in a seminar this week that 25% of Google SEO for your website is related to quality content on your social media channels.
He said that the Google search engine is now looking for longer content that contains key search phrases, correct spelling and grammar, proper text formatting, images and videos and links- both outbound to other quality sites and inbound such as those shared on social networks. It also looks at the frequency and consistency of quality content.
So what can you do to create content on social media that’s deemed to be high quality by Google?
· Incorporate full phrases that people are most likely to search for in addition to keywords. Quicksprout created an excellent infographic to illustrate Google’s change in focus for SEO.
· Share rich original content from your website across the web by linking to it on multiple social channels. The number of links, as well as the degree of sharing of these links, is considered when assessing the credibility of your website as a strong source for search results. The more incoming links to your website, the higher the search ranking.
· The number of quality followers that share and engage with your posts on social boosts the credibility of your website from Google’s perspective. Quality followers include industry influencers and people with an active following.
· In addition to using keywords and phrases in your social content, include them in the profile of your social sites to further reinforce the subject of your content.
· Work to establish a solid history of consistent quality content. The authority of your domain increases over time as the volume and richness of quality content on your social platforms builds. Even as various social media factors shift in their level of influence on SEO, the goal of search engines is to match users with the information they are looking for. So it follows that consistently building quality content will facilitate the search engines leading relevant consumers to your website.
Although Google is by far the most utilized search engine, accounting for about 90% of the search traffic according to QuickSprout, it’s not the only one. There are other search engines, each with a different algorithm. Bing, for example, has made no mention of ignoring social signals.
Most notably, a huge chunk of search engine activity is not even accounted for in the 90% mentioned above. That is search activity conducted directly on social media channels.
2. Social Media Is A Search Engine!
More and more people are going straight to social platforms to inquire about products and services or to get a feel for the culture of a business before going to a company’s website.
Brian Honigman, CEO of Honigman Media said he’s heard that social media will be replacing SEO completely to become the sole way people search for the information they are looking for. Though this is an extreme view, social media platforms are now part of SEO, as they are themselves search engines.
Neil Patel, SEO expert and CEO of QuickSprout says that social media is SEO.
Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and YouTube each have their own comprehensive search query capabilities that are highly utilized. Facebook receives thousands of searches per day, the Twitter search engine handles 2.1 billion searches per day and YouTube handles 1,140 searches every second of every day. These queries are all completely independent of Google search.
Social channels could even become for some people the direct access point to a business, whereby they become a customer while bypassing the company website altogether. In fact, 33% of consumers prefer to contact companies and brands over social media instead of over the phone.
3. Social Media Drives Traffic Directly to Your Website
When search engines find your social sites based on your content and links, they will index these sites and include them in search results. Often when a company name is searched for, their facebook page comes up before their company website.
When you share quality content with key search phrases and a link to your website, social followers will be directed back to your website.
However, social followers are not all in one place, so providing consistent quality content across multiple social platforms will help you reach the largest audience. You could miss out on a sector of your audience if your social media presence is too narrow. It would follow that the more social channels you are on, the wider the net you are able to cast for inviting relevant followers to your website and business.
Search engines are constantly changing and evolving their algorithms while marketers shift their approach accordingly to try and gain the most attention and get the best results for their business. Still, social media continues to be a powerful way to reach people with a potential need for your business. So regardless of how the search engine algorithms evolve, the strategy of generating a solid body of quality content for people to interact with across all your social channels is sure to draw your current and future customers over time.
Chloe Mason Gray from Kissmetrics sums it up this way, “Ultimately, the web is all about building relationships, fostering audiences, expressing identity and sharing ideas––it’s inherently social, and there’s no reason that SEO best practices would go against the grain, especially since the rules that govern SEO are ultimately meant to make the web a more enjoyable and useful place.”
What techniques have you tried that have worked to engage your audience and support your business?
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