Whether you own a brand new company with no online presence or have many years of experience in your industry and need a competitive edge, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the best marketing technique for dramatically increasing your web exposure, engagement, customer conversion, and overall revenue. Though more and more focus is placed on social media as a powerful search engine ranking factor and valuable marketing tool, many business owners and marketers are still hesitant to prioritize social media in their marketing plans.
Nevertheless, more evidence is surfacing that supports social media’s significant impact on the organic success of websites. Here are a few examples of why social media is important for SEO:
Potential for Links
Social media not only increases brand awareness in terms of acquiring more customers but, can also help you acquire more valuable links to your website. The key feature of social media is the ability to share content within one’s network. If your content ends up in a reputable source’s network (reporter, blogger, etc.), they can feature a link to your site on their respective website, thus adding a additional flow of traffic to your site. These links contribute to your site’s overall link profile, thus contributing to SEO impact.
Increase Traffic Volume
The volume of traffic to your site is one of the most significant factors in search engine ranking models of all kind. Social media is a great way to provide links to valuable content on your site (such as blogs, events, and videos) to drive traffic to your site. Write interesting content with the goals of keeping users on your site for as long as possible and leading them to other pages on your website. Metrics like bounce rate, pages per visit, and time on site are measured and can positively affect your search results and ranking.
Increase Search Volume
The importance of social media for building brand recognition is consistently mentioned because it has a plethora of benefits for your company. Recognition not only increases sharing, recommendation, and traffic to your site, it also increases the amount of times your business name and keywords related to your business are searched. Search engine ranking is much like a popularity contest with higher search volume showing higher popularity. Google and other search engines award popularity with higher placement on results pages.
Now that you have this information, be sure to create a complex, intriguing, and informative presence across social media with your target audience’s needs and interests in mind. Though countless posts may be time consuming, the benefits of social media on your SEO are well worth the time it takes to tweet, post, share, and hashtag.