8 Ways Your Rankings Are Impacted by Social Media
8 Ways Your Rankings Are Impacted by Social Media And 8 Tips for Effective Social Media Use
Today, most businesses have at least one active social media page. It is recommended that brands be as active as possible on social media because it can boost your website position in the search engine result pages. Regardless, it remains a debate on whether social media activity has a direct impact on your ranking in Google. There have been contradictory statements made by the same individual (Matt Cutts) over the years on this particular subject.
The reason this is such a big deal is because search engine marketers and others spend time researching what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to SEO. If social media isn’t going to help, people would have stopped wasting their time with it ages ago. There are certain things that are known when it comes to the positive effect that social media activity has on your website.
8 SEO Benefits of Social Media
1. New Pages Will Get Indexed Quicker
In order for your new pages to appear in search results, they must be added to Google’s index. In order for your pages to be index by Google, there needs to be a minimum of one link pointing to them – and it’s even better if the link is in a location that is frequently crawled by Google’s spiders. One of those places include social networks.
To put things into context, let’s look at a blog. If your site has a blog, you need to be sharing links to your new blog posts on social media. It will take just a matter of minutes to get crawled.
2. Social Sharing Will Help You Get More Backlinks.
To build you online presence, you need dofollow backlinks. Outbound links found on social media sites are generally known as nofollow links and are simply not as powerful. However, Google tends to favor websites that have both of these types of links in their profiles, rather than websites that simply a few of one or the other. The latter can sometimes be misconstrued and could earn your website a penalty.
3. Social Media Buzz Drives More Traffic to Your Website.
This is a reasonable result of the previously-mentioned point. The more links that you have, the more traffic that you will receive. Of course, the amount of additional traffic that your website will receive will depend heavily on the popularity of your pages. So, the more subscribers that you have, the more visitors and prospective customers that will purchase from you. With that being said, it is worth your time to invest in growing your pages.
4. Your Site Will Get More Exposure Through Sharing.
When it comes to the internet, you need to share your content with other people. Social media makes this easy. As long as the content that you are posting on your page is of quality and is compelling, visitors to your page are incredibly likely to take the time to share it with their friends. Then, their friends will learn about your brand and potentially share it with their friends, and the cycle continues.
As the word spreads and your brand begins to be recognized by more and more people, you gain a leg up on your competitors. Google will then see an increase in your traffic and they may begin counting it as a ranking factor. This leads us to the following point…
5. Customers Can Find You on Social Media.
There is one thing that social networks have in common with Google, Bing, and other search engines: they are sort of like search engines themselves. How? Well, people tend to perform searches on social networks for specific keywords just as they would on a regular search engine. This is actually one thing that makes social media channels so popular.
People tend to spend multiple hours per day on social networks, which makes it that much easier for people to find your business page on there than on a search engine like Google. You can make it even easier for them to find it by getting subscribed and shared or investing in pay-per-click advertisements, including retargeting campaigns. Then, you just need to convert those visitors into customers.
6. It’s Easy to Follow the Most Recent Trends.
Assuming you know what your customers are wanting, then your marketing campaign is golden. The best place that you can learn whether you are set up for success is on social media where the latest trending topics are being discussed by your target audience. You can develop and post content that your audience will find informative and enjoyable, on your website and on social media.
7. Google Tends to Rank Social Media Profiles.
It’s great when your website is optimized and it shows up in one of the top positions in the search engine result pages. However, when you do not and your brand still shows up there, then that’s really even better. A social network page that has been optimized for certain keywords is just as likely to appear in the search engine result pages as any other website page.
8. You Can Easily Receive Feedback from Your Customers.
While you could request that your customers leave testimonials and reviews on your business website, it would be a lot easier to make this request via comments on your social network page. In many cases, if your customers are impressed by your services and/or products, they will leave feedback without your even asking for it.
8 Tips on Effectively Utilizing Social Media
1. Always Know Where Your Audience Is.
If you end up advertising in the wrong place, then you are going to be wasting your time. It is almost like spending time fishing in a pond that is empty. Before you post somewhere, make sure to take the time to research the social network’s demographics. For instance, the bulk majority of users on Instagram are female. If you aren’t selling a product that is targeted primarily towards females, then you most definitely shouldn’t focus on using Instagram as a social media channel for marketing.
2. Make Sure to Post Regularly.
The more engaging and awe-inducing content that is provided, the happier that your followers are going to be. This is particularly true if you do it frequently. Due to the fact that excitements can die down pretty quickly, you don’t want to keep your followers waiting. Otherwise, they will end up forgetting why they were interested in the first place. You want to keep them updated on what you are up to. Keep in mind that some of the ones that are reading your content aren’t customers yet, and you need to keep them engaged to pull them in.
3. Focus on the Visual.
Visual information can often be more powerful than the actual written word. This is because it leaves a deeper impression and is processed easier and faster than raw text. Since you are promoting your brand, you need to make sure that you are using visual media to your advantage – to impress your audience. Visual media consists of both images and video.
Remember, a picture is often word a thousand words, but a video tends to be worth a thousand more than that. So, take the time to create visual content that is unique, cool and shareable, as it will make your brand more memorable and distinguished.
4. Less is More with Text.
When it comes to social media, regardless of the channel, less is always more. This is particularly true on Twitter where you only have 140 characters to get your point across to your audience. When information is given in short bursts it is easier to digest than when it is given in a large wall of text with long, full paragraphs. While you want your posts to be long enough to lure your users to visit your website and take action, you also don’t want the posts to be so long that they don’t want to take the time to read them.
5. Engage with Your Customers.
Compared to anything else, such as e-mails, the environment with social media messaging is very different. It is much more relaxed, friendlier and relatable. This is why it is so important that you take the time to engage with your customers. The more that you talk to them, the more comfortable that they will feel. The ore that you talk to them, the more likely it will be that you can win them over.
6. Tag Other Companies and Share Some of Their Photos.
One way that you can get backlinks is to actively link to other sites. This can also be said about social media. When you tag or mention (by linking) to other companies in your social media posts, it won’t go unnoticed by your followers or the other businesses. In fact, those businesses are incredibly likely to return the favor later down the road and mention your business in their posts at some point in time, which will provide you with some much-needed exposure. Plus, when a few of your posts mention one of your popular competitors, it helps customers make an association between the two as part of a specific niche – not to mention the fact that Google particularly values posts and webpages that mention different websites.
7. Recycle Some of Your Old Content.
It is virtually impossible to use the same content twice on your website without risking the use of duplicate content. However, with social media posts, you don’t have to worry about that issue. There is absolutely zero risk with duplicate content, which means you can recycle some outdated posts to your advantage. One thing that you will want to be careful with is abusing this power, as your audience can become annoyed if you do it too much. Use some of your most popular and lucrative posts from the past and make them new again.
8. Optimize Your Activity on Social Media for Bing.
This is probably a tip that you didn’t see coming from a mile (or further) away. However, Bing is the second most popular search engine and has a very solid relationship with social networks. In fact, its relationship with social media may be healthier than the one Google has.
Back in 2010, Bing mentioned that social signals would be a factor when it came to search engine rankings. Since then, a retraction has never come – something that Google cannot say. Therefore, you can assume that social media remains a ranking factor and should remain part of your social media campaign. Bing may not be as big as Google, but the search engine is definitely gaining momentum. With that being said, Bing should definitely be a part of your plans.
If you have any questions regarding any of the information mentioned above and/or need help making social media part of your overall marketing plan, contact us at WebDetail.
