What exactly does social media have to in relation to SEO? MWI gets the information frequently from current and prospective clients. Social media is a fast growing marketing channel that most companies have only started making use of in the last few years. However, it’s very important to leverage – especially if you’re investing resources in search engine optimization. Setting up and managing social media accounts is important to assist in SEO initiatives, but their benefits aren’t immediately obvious. Below are five reasons why social media is vital to SEO.

1.) Social Media Signals

It’s not a secret that Google, Bing, and other search engines rely on online conversations in their ranking algorithms. When people share content via Twitter, Facebook, comment or share an article it is referred to as a social engagement. The more social interactions a piece of content has, Wiki.telcocentric.com.au/index.php/Five_Reasons_Social_Media_Is_Important_For_SEO [Full Post] the more social signals it will bring to your site. These social signals are used by search engines to determine the quality of the content. This is a way for search engines to decide the most popular content and what algorithm they believe to be high-quality. Content can be immediately indexed whenever it’s attracting a significant amount of social engagement.

2.) Link Building

It is long past the time that you could make a request for hyperlinks from other sites. Since the introduction of Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm SEOs must build links the old fashioned way to create quality content that is link-worthy. But how do you reach sites who are willing to link to your content if asking them directly is thought to be an “unnatural” link building practice? Social media is the answer. Social media allows you to place your content in front of relevant audiences that may be influenced to link to it in the event that it is worthy of linking to. These users will then spread your content among others and increase your reach.

3) Amplification of content

You can create all the good-quality content that you wish to however, it will not get an enormous amount of attention without amplification. Yes, email marketing is an excellent method to amplify content, but it can only reach people within your marketing database. Social media enables you to connect with new audiences through your content. After you have shared your content, your followers will also spread it to their networks should they find it valuable. These people will then share your content with their followers, increasing your reach. In return, you earn many relevant visitors, inbound links, branding awareness and social signals All of which are utilized by search engines to assess the quality of your content.

content amplification lifecycle

4.) Brand Awareness and Signals

Brand image and recognition can tell search engines much about the credibility of your site and how much it is trusted in its ranking algorithms. In addition to boosting your content, social media also helps build brand awareness. Google calls this co-citation. These co-citations can be developed by using social media to boost Google’s trust as well as aid with search results that are branded.

5) Social Indexing

Search engines have been indexing the social media pages since a while, which means they now show up in search result pages. This enables your brand to appear on search results when you type in branded search queries , which is more than just your own website. However, it’s even more than that. Tweets that were individual from Twitter were once searchable and included in search results. This enabled your content to rank higher in search. That was only temporary for a couple of months before Google decided to discontinue it up until now. Google will once again show tweets in search results, so it’s important to leverage it for getting your content ranked.