Even though there is no such evidence that points towards a direct role of social media in SEO, it does play a role. Many would argue that Google does not use any signals by social media websites to affect the ranking mechanism, but social media offers a number of marketing tools that can elevate and promote a business with easy. Here are 6 different ways by which social media creates an impact over Search Engine Optimization:
1.Social sharing is capable of driving traffic to your website: Quality content is always appreciated and can engage the users to share, like or comment. It also has the potential of encouraging social media users to migrate towards official websites. Moreover, if you have links pointing to your website from any well-known social media platform, it makes you appear good on the search engines too.
2.Profiles on Social media ranks over the search engines: In case you type and search the name of a business on the search engine, the results would also include its social media profiles. Hence, if a business is able to rank its social media profiles over the search engine, it is certain to take its reputations higher. With this in place, a business can beat other potential competitors when it comes to visibility. An important aspect that can play a role here will be to post pertinent content over the social media profiles and staying active on a regular basis.
3.Social media facilitates capturing external links: In order to achieve a higher rank in Google, getting external links from authority websites plays a key role. Social media platforms can be utilized to promote and share the content you publish online. It eventually increases the possibility of the other websites linking back or referring to your information. A post that is of high quality over social media attracts users to share the content and stay engaged.
4.Brand awareness gets a boost from social media: With over 1.71 billion active users on Facebook and about 317 million active users over Twitter, these two are a heaven to promote content and boost brand awareness. By consistently engaging the audience with discussions, comments, and asking questions, the likelihood of them promoting your content increases substantially.
5.Local SEO is highly reliant on social media: As high as 80% of the smartphone users make an online search to find a business near them. If one studies this closely, they would understand that geography plays a critical role when it comes to user experience. Search Engine also pays a special attention on this too. There are social websites like yelp that make it a lot simpler for the businesses to take a leverage from the point of locality. Similar sites show geographic placement and offer an arena to the customers for discussing the business. With more people reviewing and engaging the business on these portal, there is a higher possibility of the search engines to take notice and further incorporate that into their search engine rankings.
6.Some search engines act in a partial manner towards different social media activities: Google definitely rules the search engine arena but there are others who play a role as well. Bing that comes second, takes into account the social authority of its users. This includes the number of people that follow them and other parameters while ranking them over the search engine. Google, on the other hand, acts partially as it gives more importance to its own social media platform i.e. Google+. This is the reason why most of the Google+ profiles rank higher on Google when compared to any of the other popular platforms.
Therefore, even though there is not a direct role played by social media when it comes to SEO, it actually influences online marketing to an extent. With the rise of social media users, there are higher chances that social signals would start becoming a lot more powerful while ranking on the search engines. With quality content that is worth sharing, a business has the opportunity to take the advantage of the available platforms and maximize the benefits they offer.