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Editor note: This is a section of our soon to be completely redone SEO Guide. Enjoy!
The role of social media in SEO and the question whether SEO is impacted by social media at all is often debated. This section will briefly sum up if and how SEO is impacted by social networks and go over instantly implementable best practices that are proven to be effective.
The role of social media within a marketing strategy is changing. When people refer to SEO, they more often mean marketing online in general. If you have started to dive into the world of digital marketing, you already know SEO is not a term that encompasses all kinds of online marketing, but one of many significant online marketing streams.
Here are some of the most common abbreviations in online marketing:
- SEO (search engine optimization)
- SEM (search engine marketing)
- PPC (pay per click)
- SMM (social media marketing)
- SMO (social media optimization)
All of these different streams impact each other directly or indirectly. It is important to understand the differences because the importance of the role of each of these streams has changed over the years. To understand what role social media plays now and where it’s going, let’s have a look at how we got here.
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A couple of years ago, it was widely assumed that social media marketing and social media optimization impacted SEO directly and even well executed SEM and PPC campaigns could increase page ranks. Businesses and agencies globally integrated their social media efforts with their SEO strategies to help Google’s algorithm recognize quality content, popularity, and influence. Companies ran campaigns for keywords they wanted to rank higher for.
While not all marketers agreed there was a direct influence on ranking, it certainly was supported by many. Especially after a video aired in December 2010 stating that social signals were a factor when it came to ranking.
Interestingly, the same person from that video, Google’s Matt Cutts, released a video three years later that stated that Google’s algorithm does not pick up on social signals to determine the page rank (Source: Kissmetrics).
Where does this leave social media in terms of SEO? Let’s see the proof:
- Google stated in 2013 that its algorithm doesn’t pick up on social signals. I think that is still the case because Google says it doesn’t have the capacity to index all social media posts. This means Google does not index everything that is indexable.
- We do know that profile and page URLs are frequently showing up on the top of the first page of Google, so having social profiles and choosing the right profile and page names are important for SEO.
- The video from 2010 was based on insights from Google and Bing. Bing has not issued a public announcement that discredits their statement that social media impacts rankings on Bing. The company stated it takes “into consideration how often a link has been tweeted or retweeted, as well as the authority of the Twitter users that shared the link.” (Source:Kissmetrics) Why should we care about Bing? Around 30% of searches in the United States alone are on Bing and devices and platforms like Apple’s Siri, Kindle Fire, Amazon Fire Phone, Xbox, and Twitter are powered by Bing. (Source: Entrepreneur)
Additionally, social networks are search engines, too. You can search for tweets on Twitter and use Facebook to find businesses, products, and service providers. Instagram is a great sales generator for industries such as fashion, beauty, food, and fitness just to name a few. Let’s not forget about YouTube.
In each case, chances are a potential customer will check out your social profiles and pages sooner or later and they typically show up – you guess it – in organic search results on Google.
A Note on Featured Social Posts on Google and Timeliness
Some social media posts such as tweets can show up on the top of the first page of Google like this:
What you post on social does get indexed on top of the first page on Google if it is popular enough at the right point in time. This is often referred to as featured social posts. You are already familiar with featured content, for instance, the latest news articles or Wikipedia extracts that show up on top.
You can optimize a social media post by inserting the respective keyword and publishing it at the right point in time or getting a lot of traffic at the right point in time. Keep in mind that Google doesn’t have the capacity to index all social media updates, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t indexed. With access to Twitter’s firehose, Google can see tweets in real-time – which is important when it comes to the timeliness of posts.
Dominate Your Geographic Area
Social media posts are your ticket to dominating your local area. You can check-in to locations with Facebook, post Instagram content at a specific location, and even be selected as one of the few people to live stream an event for Snapchat.
Post engagement – meaning getting comments, likes, shares, or clicks – is essential here. Luckily, it doesn’t have to be organically generated engagement, so you can push this with ads if you need to.
Setting Up an Effective Social Media Strategy
No matter what business or industry you are in, a social media strategy is based on three main pillars:
- Connect
- Communicate
- Coordinate
Let’s have a look at each of those pillars and see how to apply these to your business.
A Beginner’s Guide to Social Media Strategy
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