Have you ever wondered about the relationship between Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
We often get questions such as, “Does posting on social media help me get found on Google?” and “Will my SEO be improved by social media marketing?”.
The answers are not a simple yes or no. Lucky for you, we’ve decided to write a blog to help you understand the relationship between the two!
Does social media marketing help you get found on Google searches?
Social media engagement may not directly increase the ranking of your website on Google, but you can use SEO tactics to make your social media profiles more successful. Building a social media strategy that influences SEO will improve their search engine rankings. It can help you gain authority as a business, but social media strategies must be executed correctly to be successful.
Part of what we’re talking about is actually applying keyword strategies that you use for your website onto your social media profiles! Social media platforms allow people to discover new content and brands they are interested in. Social media SEO can allow you to attract traffic from people using social media search engines.
Does social media marketing increase your site’s traffic?
Posting content from your website on your social media pages can help increase the reach of content, increase your readership, direct people to your site, and ultimately have the platforms share more of your content. If a lot of people share your content on social media, more people will link to your site and this is an important SEO ranking factor. For this reason, social media can not only improve your search ranking on your site but also link and share from different platforms, increasing your brand presence.
As more and more people become aware of your products and services, you will find more and more people on the search results pages clicking on your content. The more people that visit your website and engage with your content, the more positive user signals your search ranking will benefit. When people from credible brands see your posts on social networks and share your site with links to their own blogs and websites, it strengthens your authority on the site.
They show search engines that other people find the content on your website valuable. When people visit and interact with your site, search engines interpret it as a worthwhile site to rank. If people also search for your business using brand search terms in their social profiles, there is a chance of ranking your website.
This helps you create content that is suited to your audience’s needs and gives Google and other search engines what they are looking for. Part of an SEO strategy is to make the content of your website searchable so people looking for phrases, questions, products or subjects related to your industry can find your website in the results.
Does social media marketing increase your actual SEO?
Social media activity for Google is not a search ranking factor, but social media marketing is a big part of SEO. Confusing, right? While social media does not directly affect SEO, social engagement such as likes, shares and comments generated when people share your content on social media channels help to build trust and customer loyalty, increase brand awareness, and increase visibility and traffic on the social platforms themself. We do not believe that social engagement directly influences search rankings, but the correlation can be attributed to the by-products of successful social content.
Even though social media activity does not directly influence the position of a website in search results, your social profile can rank independently on search results!
You’ll sometimes notice that when you search on Google, social media pages are among those ranking in the top positions. If you study the websites that are in those high positions, you will find that many of them have strong social activity and their profiles are fully completed.
Just as you optimize a website for page titles and keywords, check your social media profiles to make sure that they reflect your SEO strategy on your website. Ensuring that your social profiles match your website is the easiest way to evaluate and dominate search engine results pages. Which results in higher clicks and greater organic traffic.
Bonus: LinkedIn is the most powerful platform in terms of the way search engines search it, and incorporating clever SEO tactics into your company’s LinkedIn pages can bring great benefits to your rankings. For example – When you use hashtags on LinkedIn posts, they are automatically added to the URL of that post.
Does Google keep this relationship a secret?
The main concern about the relationship between social media and SEO is how it affects website rankings. Especially since social media has become a huge online marketing tool. Google search algorithms are typically kept pretty secret. But there have been comments by people who work there suggesting social engagement plays no role in SEO rankings.
Do you get backlinks from social media posts?
Most links from social media to external sites are tagged with “rel = nofollow”, which means that search engine crawlers do not transfer direct links (don’t follow) from social media sites to external sites.
We consider SEO and social media marketing as two complementary aspects of an integrated digital marketing strategy with numerous functional similarities and endless possibilities. SEO and social work together to reinforce each other’s results but don’t necessarily impact one another directly.
It’s important to broaden your SEO approach to take into consideration the various ways people find content on the web.