We’ve heard it before: your company or brand should be actively participating on social media networks, if for no other reason than to show the online community that you want to communicate and engage with them. However, what if these networks and social signals actually played an even more important role and had the potential to become even more beneficial SEO-wise than standard back-linking? A recent article explored this possibility and several reasons are provided that help explain why this could happen, also reinforcing the importance of utilizing Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and more.
Though obviously much more important to utilize now than they were several years ago, there is still debate over just how strong of a role social signals play in contributing to a company’s organic SEO rankings. What we do know for certain though is that these networks are becoming more and more significant and relied upon by many people. It is for this reason that one should have a clear understanding of the components necessary for social signals to be effective should they in fact become more vital than links in terms of SEO success, but also because they truly contribute to the main objective of online marketing: increased visitors to a company or brand’s website and hopefully increased profits.
There have been numerous SEO Bloggers that believe social signals are becoming the new “link” in terms of overall importance when ranking a website. Essentially, this would mean that the impact of social signals would defeat links as the most valuable ranking factor and here is why:
1) The world is becoming more social-network-dependent by the day. Today’s kids will eventually become tomorrow’s buyers, and their main means of communication is via Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other social networks. This dependency is likely to only increase, and this ultimately also means more company and brand interactions across these platforms as well. People are spending significantly more time on social networks than on search engines, and this will only continue in the future.
2) A person is much more apt to trust and rely on a company or brand whose website was suggested by a friend or acquaintance than simply by a search engine. Websites with a social presence and that actively participate in social media are more likeable, shareable, recommendable and typically maintain a stronger reputation. Furthermore, search engines can evaluate these shares as recommendations, which would inevitably boost the ranking of that particular site.
3) Companies or brands that maintain websites with a positive and respected social media status typically have more brand/customer loyalty, more referrals, and ultimately more sales. These factors all have the ability to lead to more positive reviews as well as inbound linking.
The future result of how much genuine impact these social signals could achieve is still unknown, but taking these factors into consideration and utilizing social media for your company or brand may just lead to the big pay-off you are looking for.
– Casey Guntlow
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