How Important is Social Media within your SEO efforts?
A question that has been surrounded with many different views is the impact that a social media presence actually has on improving your SEO and whether it is even worth it at all. Well I can tell you that is most definitely has a large part to play on search engine optimisation and that it can be vitally important online tool for firms to utilise.
Looking at Google+ as a fine example of the changing trends in which search engines look at our online behaviour and habits, then link this in with our search engine results t give a much more personalised web experience. Google+ is not just a social media platform, but it is almost a search tool in itself. Many users that are logged into their Google+ account all the time (myself included) will find that the search engine results page (SERP) will be completely different to when they are not logged into their account. This is because Google recalls which pages you have given a ‘+1’ or linked to on your profile and give these website preference in where they place in the SERP in the understanding that they have more relevance to you. For example, when we search for local web designers Birmingham or SEO Birmingham and then +1 a couple of the websites showing up in say page 8, the next time we search the terms ‘web designers Birmingham‘ and ‘SEO Birmingham‘ these websites will now appear on the first couple of pages. This can be a hugely influential tool toward gaining instant SEO.
Google itself have also been building whats known as a social graph which goes through all of a user’s associated and linked to social accounts and platforms to develop a kind of map that interlinks all of the activities and enables Google to understand exactly which accounts are relevant to which websites, etc. This is important to understand and by using various different social accounts such as Facebook and Twitter, you can create this network of backlinks to your website and increase traffic and your overall SEO.
One other fine example of the importance that Google, along with other search engines places upon social media is with YouTube. YouTube is seen by the average user as a place where they can watch videos and engage socially with others on the site, however, in reality, YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world and Google hides no secret to the fact that it actively encourages video content to rank higher in the search algorithms.
These are just a few example of how important social media is to your SEO and online marketing, but the possibilities really are endless. The main thing to take away from this is that if you don’t have a social presence, get one!
