Digital marketers have debated the possible impacts of social media on SEO. Former Google executive Matt Cutts argued through a video posted in 2014 that social signals like gaining followers, liking, or retweeting posts on social media have no direct influence on the site’s SEO rankings. However, some reports claimed that it could still have some impact on the factors that can affect the rankings online.
Here are several important facts that could help them understand how social media and SEO can work together to improve a website’s search engine rankings.
Will SEO Benefit from Social Media?
While many argue that social media has no immediate effect on SEO, it still impacts the ranking factors like boosting organic traffic. It means that it can still have an indirect impact on search engine rankings.
Businesses can gain from using social media to boost their rankings online. They can ask their SEO agency in Singapore to post several links on their social media page. The followers of the page may click on at least one of the links. As a result, it can help in increasing organic traffic on the website.
According to CognitiveSEO, any social presence like shares, likes, and comments is adversely associated with site ranking improving its rankings in Google or other popular search engines. It means that websites that rank high on search engine results pages may have a larger average social media presence than those in the lower rankings.
Also, social media can help build authority due to the number of people who follow the account. If the site regularly publishes high-quality content and generates relevant backlinks, the website authority will improve over time. The valuable content is what the audience usually looks for. Syndicating the content on social media encourages people to visit the website and read the content, which could eventually affect the search engine rankings. Building an interconnected network of social media followers means that the content will have more relevant venues for exposure.
What Are the Best Social Media Sites to Boost SEO?
There are plenty of social media sites to choose from, but here are the top 3 social media sites in Singapore which we recommend.
- Facebook
The popular social networking site has been around for the last 16 years, and it remains one of the top sites for content sharing. Facebook’s interface lets users post and shares any content with all their “friends,” including videos, images, blogs, and infographics. Also, Google can crawl on links posted on Facebook. It means that if businesses post a link to particular content on their Facebook wall, the search engine bots will be able to index it after evaluation. It can be more useful if the link has been shared on different Facebook pages. - Twitter
This microblogging site is also useful for sharing content like links, videos, and photos. While Google cannot crawl Twitter posts like on Facebook, the website has its unique feature that uses hashtags to make the posts searchable on the platform. If people search for a keyword on Twitter, they only need to type a hashtag and add the specific keyword. It will prompt Twitter to take the user in the list of posts using the same keyword to find the content they are looking for. - YouTube
Video content is rapidly becoming very valuable to every audience. It allows them to get as much information as possible by watching the videos instead of reading it. Websites that include videos on their posts earn more organic traffic. It also allows the site to have longer engagement with their leads. This feature can send a positive indication to Google.
Other useful social media sites to help improve rankings include Medium, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Useful Social Media Practices for Better SEO Rankings
Social media can still provide several ways to help boost a website’s search engine ranking even if it has no direct impact on the ranking factors. It is common to use the following practices to take advantage of social media for websites.
- Create Quality Content
It has long been established that backlinks are one of the essential factors for website ranking. If the business focuses on boosting their social media marketing, it can attract useful backlink opportunities, especially if more users notice the post. - Make Content Sharing Convenient for Users
While regular social media users post and share on their pages for different reasons, businesses expand their customer reach and convey their brand message through this medium. They find it useful since it is necessary to help more people know about their brand and boost their leads.If they want to expand their network, they must take advantage of the share buttons so their followers can spread the message. They must also create compelling call-to-action content that could encourage the readers to share the news.
Businesses can also promote their brand’s social media profiles and optimize their images for both SEO and social media purposes. They can also boost their rankings by building customer relationships through active engagement.
Conclusion
By learning the impact of social media on SEO practices, businesses can determine how to make their social media to increase branding exposure and organic traffic to the website, improving their SEO in the process.