The Social Media and SEO tandem is not something new to us. These inbound marketing strategies are widely used by small and big companies to gain exposure and visibility online. Each strategy co-exists independently but combining them can give more advantages especially to online businesses that greatly rely on search engines to reach their target market.
Social media now plays a vital role in website optimization and though there are still some people who hesitate and have some doubts, there’s no denying how search engines nowadays put more value on how contents are rated and being shared on social media sites. If you are still one of those who have hesitations and doubts, here are the 5 foolproof reasons why it is highly recommended to use social media to improve your website’s SEO performance.
1. Social signals are now given more importance in ranking contents in search engine results pages (SERPs). The +1s, likes, retweets, reshares, and favorites are just some of the social signals used by search engines nowadays to determine content’s quality and relevance. These signals affect your site’s search rankings and search engine visibility.
2. Social media profiles are regularly spidered by search engines. Sharing your contents on famous social media sites is now becoming more important as it increases the probability that they will appear on the SERPs.
3. Your social media presence can affect your website’s rankings. How people rate and share your contents on various social media sites can surely affect your website rankings. Thus, it is important to build a social media strategy that encourages your social media followers or fans to be more engaging.
4. Author rank, the new way to rank contents according to their author’s credibility is closely associated with Google+ profiles and circles. Author rank which is powered by the Authorship mark-up seems to be the next big thing in SEO. Contents that appear on top of the SERPs are mostly those ones which are written by credible writers (with verified Google+ profiles). Author rank as an important factor that affects search rankings is powered by Google’s social media network, Google+.
5. It is now easier to track social data and characteristics through the use of Google Analytics. The newest version of Google Analytics now features Social Media reporting tools that give SEOs and webmasters social media monitoring and measurement capabilities. Tracking the outcomes of any of your social media marketing campaigns is now closely integrated in the overall metrics system that determines the success of your online marketing efforts.
Another important factor that makes social media more preferable (to be used alongside SEO) than any other inbound marketing strategies is that, it is free. You need no huge investment or marketing budget to start your own social media marketing campaign. It is greatly beneficial for small online businesses that are still starting up.
Photo Credit: Photo by Webtreats and used under the Creative Common License.
This blog post is brought to you by www.oneseocompany.com, a Dallas SEO & Internet Marketing Company.
