Should You Use Social Media for SEO?

The exact impact of social media on SEO is not known to a search engine optimization company. But, social media does impact SEO. It’s a strong signal to the search engines when someone interacts with your content socially by sharing, retweeting, or giving your content a +1. It shows Google and other search engines that you are producing good content, which is their number one goal.

It’s also difficult to manipulate social networks from an SEO perspective, which is why search engines view social networks favorably. If someone with influence interacts with your content, it’s even more powerful because author rank is included in SEO, while influencing your ranking.

Using Facebook for SEO
It’s questionable how much the links are valued within Facebook because Facebook does not allow Google to see the links. However, the search engines can see how many likes and shares have taken place though a third party. The search engines can also see what’s happening on your site, which is why it’s important to add share functionality to your website and other properties. When writing Facebook posts, include your keyword in your post, as well as the full link (not a shortended link, such as Bitly). Including the full link helps primarily with Bing since Google is blocked out of Facebook.

Using Twitter for SEO
Google crawls Twitter on a regular basis. By tweeting something, you can get your page on your site crawled quickly. You can also reach out to people through Twitter, build a relationship and through that relationship, get a link to your site.

Using LinkedIn for SEO
LinkedIn sits behind its own system, which means that Google and other search engines can’t see much. However, LinkedIn profiles can rank within the search results in the search engines. As a result, it’s good to optimize your LinkedIn profile and get involved in LinkedIn Groups. Google can see that people are coming to your site from a business network. They can also see the average time that people are spending on your site. All of these are positive signals to Google.

Using YouTube for SEO
You can put a link in your videos back to your Web pages. The focus should be on developing and publishing quality videos that provide a lot of value to your audience to get a high volume of views, comments and shares. You also want to link your videos to relevant pages on your site (not just to your home page). If you are going to use video in your site, the number of views is important. It is for this reason that we recommend embedding videos into your site from YouTube.

Using Google+ for SEO
Your author rank influences the optimization of pages on your site. Google looks at your influence on the world, which gives you author rank as an individual, impacting everything including the pages on your site. As a result, it’s vital to link your Google+ profile to your blog. The strength of your blog, including comments, shares, and +1s give you an author rank.

As you can see, social media impacts your rankings in the various search engines. As a result, it’s important to integrate social media into your SEO campaign.

If you have any questions at all, please leave a comment below. We are here to help.