4 Ways Social Media Affects SEO

The debate rages on: does social media impact a website’s search engine ranking?

Many marketing experts believe social media doesn’t directly affect a website’s SEO ranking. However, social media does impact the elements that affect your website’s ranking, and therefore indirectly affects your ranking.

This is how social media influences your website’s search engine ranking,

1. Social drives traffic

Website traffic has long been considered one of the top ranking factors. Social media influences your website’s traffic by optimising content visibility.

When plenty of users share your content within their social networks, they are going to dramatically increase traffic directed towards your website. This, in turn, will boost your SEO ranking. CognitiveSEO conducted a case study where they found their ranking for the term “Google images” rose by over 60 spots to the 8th position in just one day. This outstanding increase occurred directly as a result of the business receiving 20,000 unique Reddit visitors.

2. Social channels rank in search engines

Your social media channels have greater reach than social media alone: they rank amongst search engine result pages (SERPs). They are often found in branded search results, typically on the first page.

This means your brand can enhance your search engine visibility and create more traffic through social profile optimisation. Social channels like Facebook and Instagram will often rank highly on branded searches, thus directing potential customers to your profile to gain a greater sense of your brand and its content.

3. Social enhances content reach

Social media is an invaluable method for ensuring your content reaches a significant audience. On search engines, people will only discover your content once they have searched for a relevant keyword. But through social channels, you are displaying content to consumers who weren’t previously aware they needed to see your content.

Quality content will more than likely translate into high quality traffic which, of course, impacts your rankings. A quality social strategy, supported by linking, can see an amazing increase in traffic directed from social across to a business’s website.

4. Social impacts local SEO

Social media has an influence on your local SEO efforts. As you may be aware, your name, address and phone number (NAP), plays a vital role in local search rankings. Maintaining consistent NAP information across your website and listings will help Google consider your business as highly credible. This can help boost your search engine rankings, so it is important to maintain this information across your social media profiles as well as website and local listings.

Furthermore, certain social platforms allow you to geotag your images and videos, thus furthering the potential of reaching your local audience and turning some valuable heads. Instagram, for example, allows marketers to geotag their content. Users can then go on to search content that is tagged in a specific location. This can drive local customers to both your website and your physical storefront if you have one.

Combine the two

Social media and SEO strategy work together improve your brand’s overall visibility and search engine ranking. By driving traffic to your website through your social media channels you will indirectly increase your rankings and your conversions.

So if you weren’t sure whether your social strategy plays a role in your SEO results, you’ve now got 4 more reasons to get that social strategy working for your business.

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