Digital marketing has evolved over the past few years in response to Google’s algorithm updates and the steady rise of the 'content is king' era.
Previously, the standard SEO strategy focused on singular keywords. Today, SEO strategies focus more on long-tail keywords, keyword intent, and users' search needs.
In 2014, Matt Cutts, former head of webspam at Google, pointed out that social signals (metrics such as Facebook page followers and likes) don't affect search rankings.
This threw off digital marketing experts worldwide, as they'd been operating on the assumption that Social SEO was used in Google search rankings.
Understandably, marketers were in a fit, to say the least, since Cutts himself said that social signal relationships were factored in rankings back in December 2010.
Despite the whole back and forth on the social SEO perspective, results show that while not a direct factor, social SEO signals certainly influence your SEO and Google ranking.
What is Social SEO?
Social media SEO, or social SEO, refers to how social media marketing can be used to boost the website’s search engine optimization and organic traffic.
This interactive metric shows how the target audience interacts with your brand’s content on social media platforms.
In digital marketing, social signals are actions that indicate user engagement, such as reviews, likes, shares, votes, and customer comments.
User behavioral metrics on social channels, including social SEO, are critical to the relevance of a search query on Google's SERP.
The idea here is that the more content from a business is liked, shared, and commented on, the higher its value and relevance and, therefore, the higher it may rank in Google search engines.
How Does Social Media Impact SEO?
There has been a long debate on whether social media impacts SEO and Google search rankings in digital marketing.
Four years after Cutts' video in 2010, Twitter temporarily blocked Google’s access to its social network. This was around the time Matt Cutts had to address the fact that Google couldn’t rely on social SEO signals that might be a 'temporary' idea.
One noteworthy change from previous years is that Facebook and Twitter business pages, along with other social channels, are appearing more frequently on the first page of SERPs.
Hootsuite conducted a digital marketing experiment to test the impact of social media on SEO ranking in a set of articles.
They observed the aggregate number of social engagements and the change in rank in one week across all the different test groups.
The results show that, on average, articles with the highest social shares ranked higher than those without social media marketing during the experiment.
Yes, social SEO appears to influence rankings (though not directly) and, in turn, organic lead generation. But that doesn’t mean you should spam customers' Facebook for social shares and marketing.
Doing this will only annoy your target market, and they might ignore your company or completely stop following you.
Also, note that paid search promotion has almost doubled the SEO ranking of organic promotion. The Pay Per Click landscape is quite different from what it was years ago.
Companies should integrate social media marketing into their SEO strategy, digital marketing, and advertising campaigns. But there’s more to benefit from social SEO than its potential to influence your SEO and the ability to rank higher positively.
Here are four more reasons why a social SEO strategy is important in your overall digital marketing strategy:
4 Reasons Why Social SEO is Important
Social media may not directly affect search engine rankings, but it can still be helpful in certain aspects of business marketing.
Here are the benefits of using social SEO in your advertising and marketing:
1. Helps drive quality traffic to your site
One of the top benefits of businesses using social SEO strategies is that it helps generate more organic traffic from the target market.
Social media has great potential in lead generation and driving organic social traffic to your business website.
Social media marketing leverages social networks to help the right people find your company. In addition, the search engine is built to identify better ways to serve its users beyond the technical aspects of advertising.
IBM is a good example of a company that maximizes social media SEO, which helps drive quality traffic to its site. By engaging with its audience and using compelling content, IBM can resonate with its viewers and showcase its legacy.
This content creates incredible engagements and helps them drive quality traffic back to its website.
With 4.65 billion social media users, social media helps you get to know your customers through digital marketing. Here are some ways companies can use social media platforms to increase website traffic:
- Post high-quality content
- Build relationships with your target audience by asking questions and conducting surveys
- Use the feedback to adjust your social media marketing strategies
- Collaborate with influencers
- Use visuals
Brands will need to do audience research and identify the most viable social media platforms. The business can also increase its content's visibility in SERPs by strategically adding keywords, building links, and using paid search promotions to optimize its content.
2. Increases branded search
Social media SEO is key to growing your brand's visibility in the industry. That is instrumental in boosting branded search.
Branded search terms usually include a company or brand name. So, instead of searching “shoes,” a user may search for “Nike shoes.”
Social media marketing and presence help spread the word about your brand and services, increasing brand recognition.
More people will learn about your brand and engage with it through the same social media platforms. As a result, some people start using branded searches when looking for your products.
When people perform many branded searches, Google's search algorithms begin to associate that brand with specific services or niches within the industry. Most SEO experts agree with this correlation.
Increasing brand recognition is a great way to market your brand. Use social SEO to boost brand awareness. That can then help you generate more branded searches, which could boost your SEO.
3. Helps build authority
Your site's authority will grow over time if you focus on creating authoritative content and building a reputable backlink profile. Social signals can also help a business build more brand authority.
Building brand authority on Google is a continuous process that requires relevant, high-quality content, a strong marketing strategy, and time.
Here's how to build your business authority using social media marketing:
- Create high-quality content
- Your marketing team should be consistent
- Share content through a solid posting strategy
- Connect and involve other professionals/websites in your content and advertising
Today, you can’t ignore social media marketing tools if you're trying to work out an effective content marketing strategy. All that positive attention generated through social media marketing creates social SEO signals and boosts your brand authority.
4. Social content can appear in search results
Search engine spiders can crawl social media posts for indexing. Some of these posts may then appear in the organic search results.
For instance, if you search for home decor ideas on Google, the top search results often include social media pages.
Besides Facebook, YouTube videos also appear in search results. For example, if you search for "backlinks explained" on Google, some YouTube videos will appear in the Google organic search results.
When you optimize high-quality social media content, it may appear in Google search results, helping you drive more traffic to your site.
Using a content improver to manage your blog and social content helps your site gain greater visibility.
I personally use the reword sentence generator to turn existing content into unique, engaging content.
Conclusion
Google search engines and social media SEO are not tools that operate in silo relationships. As a result, we can expect companies with strong social media marketing to perform better in Google SERPs.
Social SEO is one of the best tools for improving your performance on Google search.
Although it may not directly influence your Google rankings, it can help drive quality traffic/ reviews to your product and increase branded search.
Moreover, it'll boost your marketing and brand authority and increase the visibility of your social SEO content on Google SERPs. Therefore, our advice is that it’s time you took social SEO marketing seriously. Good luck.
Author Bio
Tomasz is the Marketing Executive & Partner at Surfer, a platform that merges content strategy, creation, and optimization into one smooth process. With almost a decade of industry experience, he is responsible for developing and executing marketing strategies. Currently, he manages a team of 4 wonderful experts.