Vendors and Channel Partners are increasingly aware of how social media's pros outweigh any cons. Yes, it's more than just reach and amplification. Social media actually helps drive SEO.
Getting Found in Search
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art (and science) of getting found in search engine results. Many, factors play into your rank on search like, new and returning visitors, number of pages visited, how long visitors stay on your site, URLs, content, where visitors go after they leave, how many links you have from others sites to yours and vice versa, to name a few.
It’s easy to see how social media increases your visibility and how posting links on social to your website increases traffic. But that’s not the end of it.
A few years ago, the dominant SEO strategy included “link building,” whereby companies did outreach to entice other websites to link back. The more inbound links, the more often and thoroughly search engines indexed a site.
Links prove authority in your niche. Expressing your relevancy and knowledge help catapult you the top of search results for your chosen keywords. Makes sense since it’s a search engine’s job to return the best results.
Link building still matters but it works a bit differently. Other sites now reference your content within the body of theirs and that's the new link building. And, social media which wasn’t as popular a few years ago, is now a major player in link building because social is what's exposing your content to the masses, making social media a critical component in SEO.
Social sharing and audience engagement is now a virtual “up-vote” for your site’s SEO. The more your content is socialized, the faster, deeper and more often your site is indexed, which improves page rank and impacts placement in search.
But That’s not all Social Media Does for SEO
Followers factor in as does your profile bio section. Search engines index social sites. Social profiles link to your website, display keywords in bios, and by way of that, help SEO.
Make sure your profile matches your site for maximum impact. Followers matter too. It’s easy to buy a chunk of fake followers but it won’t help your SEO. Take time to cultivate a following of engaged, active users. It helps SEO because search engines can index followers vs. engaged followers and page rank is impacted by that measurement.
SiriusDecisions, reported: 67% of the B2B buyer’s journey is now done digitally. That means finding you online and getting the information a buyer needs to make informed decisions happens, before they contact you. So, SEO is more important than ever for inbound marketing.
The next time you explain why social is important, don’t forget to mention SEO. Search engines pay attention. They know if Partners use it and they watch how engaged their followers are. The more clicks on a link from social, the more traffic to the website, the more authoritative you are and the higher your page rank, all of which determine where you land on search.
Yes, it’s difficult to measure the ROI of social media but we can see how it impacts SEO with the help of Google analytics and we can logically understand the importance.
Photo Credit: Pitstopmedia.com, agilebusinesslogic.com, TheSocialMediaCompany.ca
