Let’s start with a popular video of Matt Cutts.
When he was asked if Google considers social signals in their ranking algorithm, he said, NO. But he added a very important point. He confirmed that Google treats social networks like any other webpages.
So, if you are performing well on your social media pages, chances are that your stories might get indexed by Google. And this is as simple as that. Let’s dig deeper.
How it works:
Social media is an open space, where people have easy access to your content where they can easily share it on any network they want. Post Hummingbird era, Google indexes webpages that are more and more liked and shared by the internet inhabitants. If your social content is being shared by many users, you too can rank in Google’s SERP.
Image: postano
However there is an untold story of the entire process as well. Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram offer high-quality links, thus have high authority. We all know that search engines like Google give priority to high authoritative sites. This gives a natural upper-hand to social networks in organic searches.
Let’s find out how to use social media to boost SEO:
Build stronger and bigger community:
The more people you have, the more reach you get. This is the simple mantra of success in social SEO. Try to get more and more people in your social channels. But pay attention to quality. Any random person will not add to your marketing. Target people, who would be relevant to your business or would be interested to share your content on social media.
Show your content to the right people:
Not all the members of your social community would be interested to consume your content. So, don’t show them all of your posts and updates. You can use social media ads to segregate targeting for each content you post on social media.
However, Facebook offers an amazing targeting option for its organic posts. You can target specific fans with specific interests for each post. Using this feature would let you have a more engaged readership.
Create shareable content:
This is nothing but the obvious. You need to create content that your fans and followers would love to share on their timeline. Remember, we are not talking about Likes or Favorites. It’s social shares that matter most. With Likes, the story remains within the user. But with a share, your content stays on others’ newsfeed. It’s more like social link-building.
Social media link-building supports user-to-user growth. For example, if a person shares your content and he has 250 friends on Facebook and 1000 followers on Twitter, your content is visible to all of their friends and followers on these social networks. It increases the chances of better reach.
Use keywords strategically:
Keywords are important for SEO and so is for social media. There are two ways you can include keywords in your social media posts. One: hashtags and Two: post description. All the major social networks supports both in their search algorithm. Let’s a take a look at some of the examples.
This is a screenshot from Facebook, when we searched with “SEO”. And now one from Twitter.
If your content is easily searchable on social media, people would automatically share them. In both these searches, we searched News and got the same result. This means that it’s the highest shared content on social media on the given day. And keywords play a key role in the whole process.
Use Google+:
Google Plus results are included in Google search pages and there is nothing new here. The only drill is, the person searching on Google, must be logged in to his or her Google account and must have you in one of his/her circles on Google+.
Google Plus offers a space for locally registering your business in your page on the network. You need to put your business address there along with other relevant information. This lets your viewers get a clear idea about your company on Google. Also pay attention to your reviews. Google prioritizes businesses with maximum reviews while indexing them for search.
Be sure with local listing on social media:
Just like Google Plus, other social networks too allow you to add your business address and map. Networks like Facebook and FourSquare are worth a special mention here. You can add your exact location on these pages. It’s helpful in two ways. First, your customers can easily find you on social media. Second, they can easily check in the business location. This is a again crucial factor for local SEO.
Now it’s your turn!
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