Social Media and SEO: 13 Facts You Need to Know -

Google’s algorithm contains more than 200 ranking factors and guidelines.

Beyond the guidelines that we are familiar with, the algorithm also contains many hidden rank aspects—in particular, the correlation between your social media pages and your rank.

Google has expressed that your social signals are not a ranking factor. However, evidence does suggest that your social media and SEO do impact each other. While we may never know the full extent of Google’s in-depth algorithm, we do know proven ways social media can positively influence your SEO and vise versa.

Want in on the secret? Follow along to discover 13 social media SEO facts you must know to advance your digital presence in 2021.

1. Social Media Increases Your Site Traffic

Posting valuable and interesting content on your website is worthless if no one sees it. While improving your SEO increases your chances of an audience organically finding your content, the best way to amp up your site traffic is through your social channels.

Including links to your URLs and promoting your updates will increase the eyes on your webpage and impact your site’s relevancy.

2. Social Media Increases Touchpoints

People are hardwired to choose comfort over the unknown. For this reason, you’ll need to make many appearances to gain trust and preference from your audience.

Having an active social media account with great content encourages users to recognize you. This plays in your favor when they are in search of your products and choose your familiar name from the list of results.

3. Click-Through Rates Impact Ranking

Now that people are recognizing you and seeing your links on social media, they will start to click-through to your content more freely.

While it’s uncertain if social media click-through impacts your ranking, using a search results link on your post leads Google to believe that your click-through is from the search results.

4. Youtube Videos Rank on Google

Youtube is the second largest search engine on the internet. Naturally, there is a large crossover between content on each of these platforms. In fact, producing great video content can actually result in your video landing a top-ranking position on Google.

Including links, monitoring your comments, and using keywords in your descriptions can greatly impact your videos rank.

5. Social Insights Can Guide SEO Strategy

Social media is a great test site for keywords and SEO strategies on your website. Using the analytics provided by your Facebook page for example can give you insights on what content is performing well and who your target audience is.

You can use these factors to customize your approach and lead your ideal audience to your website with more relevant keywords.

6. Social Pages Appear on SERPS

Your social media business page will appear on Google’s results page. So make sure you’ve optimized your social pages for the algorithm as well.

Many consumers will scope out a social media page before deciding to purchase from a company. Having a highly visible page provides them with easy access to your content.

As an added bonus, having more than one result in the top ranks will see your brand taking up space and send a message of authority to users.

7. Highly Shared SEO Posts Rank Better

When a post goes viral on social media, Google assumes the content is high-quality and favors that URL for ranking.

The number of likes, shares, and comments you receive on your posts sends google a signal of authority, reliability, and user interest.

8. Google Crawls Social Sites

Google’s crawlers use links to jump from one piece of content to the next. This link following remains true with social media as well.

For this reason, including links in your posts, on your page, and having others share your links increases crawler navigation to your page. This lets Google know that there are many reputable links to your resource and increases its relevance.

9. What Social Media Says About You Impacts What You Rank For

What people have to say about your brand, products, and posts can actually influence what keywords and phrases you rank for.

Google places value on what users are saying because its ultimate goal is to present the best possible results. How your audience views you will greatly impact how Google’s bots categorize you.

10. Social Media Promotion Speeds up Crawling and Indexing

Before your URL can appear on the SERPS, it must be crawled and indexed. Of course, the faster this happens, the more organic visibility you can gain.

Fortunately, sharing new content to social media with links builds buzz and traffic to the new URL. This increased buzz prompts Google to crawl and index your content faster, placing a priority on the already linked and visited pages.

11. Valuable SEO Relationships are Built on Social Media

Content on social media leads to more impactful relationships with relevant audiences. In fact, connecting with other businesses can lead to high-quality backlinks and features on other sites.

This improves your visibility as well as your SEO, allowing you to establish that high-quality resource label Google values.

12. Social Keywords and Links Impact Rank

The longtail keywords and anchor text you use in your posts allow Google to associate your content more efficiently with queries.

The impact of these keywords grows when your links are shared multiple times. This sends the message that your link is the best result for that targeted search.

13. Social Media Is a Search Engine Itself

When we think about SEO (search engine optimization), we often jump straight to Google, Bing, or Yahoo. While these platforms are where most of your SEO content will see a change, it’s important to note that social media platforms are search engines in themselves too.

Often consumers will turn to Facebook or Instagram in search of highly recommended products or services. As you already know, the most efficient way to find this information is to use the search function. The keywords searched will then be used to suggest applicable content long after the search.