Blog
The Benefits of Using Social Media for SEO
If you thought Facebook, Twitter, and other social platforms were only good for sharing funny cat videos to your friends—you better think again. From its invention, social media has completely overhauled the way businesses are able to connect with their target audience; and though it has certainly rocked the boat of digital marketing, one thing is clear: social media is here to stay.
A good social media agency can be one of your business’s most powerful tools to establish its online credibility and generate buzz for your brand. However, it doesn’t end there. Building your business’s social media presence also offers added value for search engine optimization—helping direct new traffic to your site and increase its overall ranking.
To help you get a sense of just how important social media is for SEO, read on for some of the top benefits.
Establish Your Brand in the Digital Age
When your grandmother is on Facebook but your brand isn’t, you should know there’s a problem.
Let’s take a look at the numbers: 1. 81% of the US population uses at least one social media platform 2. In 2015 90% of Millennials and 35% of adults over 65 used social media—numbers that are projected to increase into the future. 3. 33% of Millennials cited social media as their preferred platform for communicating with businesses over any other channel.
By building your business’s social presence, you can establish your brand in the digital age and take advantage of the tools that can increase your visibility online.
Become a Credible Authority in the Eyes of Google—and Your Customers!
The facts are that Google and other search engines like to rank authority sites higher in their search ranking. They accomplish this in part by crawling social media pages like Facebook and Twitter to discover new content that factors into their search algorithms. By consistently adding fresh, quality content to your social accounts, you can increase the number of times Google looks at your page and thereby improve the overall ranking of your brand.
Just like Google likes credible websites, so do customers. By building you social media presence and publishing customer-facing social content, you can establish your brand as a credible industry authority. In a world where social media is central, keeping your Facebook, Twitter, and other profiles up to date can help lend legitimacy to your brand.
Link Building through Social Shares
If you have some knowledge of SEO, then you already know the importance of backlinking to increase a website’s ranking; and, when done properly, social media can be an additional avenue for link building. Social signals like the number of time a post is liked, shared, retweeted, etc. establish a sense of trust and authority for your brand that can help improve its search result ranking. Not only that, but each time a post is shared or retweeted you are able to tap into a new network of potential customers, increasing your brand visibility and possibly attracting organic traffic back to your site.
When search engines see that the social platforms linked to your site are getting a lot of buzz, this can speed up the process of ranking higher. In fact, Senior Strategist at Google cited link building and quality content as the two most important signals that factor into the search algorithm.
Social Media is the New Search
The way that people find businesses is currently in transition, with more people clicking to the Facebook search bar over the Google one more than ever before. Your social media profiles act as important branding material for your business, which is why keeping them up to date can help establish a sense of credibility that both customers and search engines will be attracted to.
In addition, building your social presence can help improve your local SEO which can then drive foot traffic into your brick and mortar. In fact, according to a recent study, 72% of users who performed a local search visited a store location within 5 miles.
Social Media Made Easy
Keeping all of your social media profiles up to date can turn into a full-time job if you want to reap the maximum SEO benefits. For those looking for a more hands-off approach, our inclusive services can help manage your account through every step, from launch a Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn account for your business to updating your profiles with daily posts.
Through our social media management, we can help establish your business as an authority within its niche through high-quality social media activity. Not to mention, through our embedded Twitter feed, we can help keep both your website and social media account up-to-date with a constant stream of fresh content that will prompt Google to visit your site more often—thereby increasing your ranking.
Get in touch with our SocialMotion team today to learn how we can help boost your Google rankings.