Social media has infiltrated every aspect of our lives on a daily, if not hourly, basis. With a meteoric rise to prevalence, social media has ingrained itself into our culture. The business world has not been immune from the social media craze, with more and more businesses relying on their social media performance to help scale their success. With social media here for the long haul, how does it impact a business’ SEO?
The short answer: It doesn’t. At least not directly. In 2014, Google came out with an official video saying social signals do not affect search rankings. In fact, historically it was understood that even links coming from social media posts or profiles bore an automatic “nofollow” tag, signaling to search engines not to pass any link equity on to the site they linked to.
However, there are ways for social media success to indirectly influence your SEO.
How Social Media Could Impact SEO
While the direct impact of social media on SEO has been denied, social media can have significant impacts on-site traffic, SERPs, and generating links by putting quality content in front of influencers.
Traffic
Many case studies have demonstrated that surges in traffic have directly correlated with an ensuing increase in rankings. There has also been confirmation that direct traffic and repeat traffic can lead to rankings boosts.
SERPs
A powerful impact social media can have on visibility is that social media profiles aren’t simply listed on their respective platform, they also show up in the search engine result pages (SERPs). This visibility helps companies capture more real estate on the SERP, leading to an increase in brand awareness as well as higher click-through rates.
Links
In spite of links from a social media post or profile not directly passing equity to a website, social media can have a massive impact on link acquisition through the enormous reach they provide. If a company creates a high-quality piece of content and distributes it through their social media channels, there is an increased likelihood of influencers and other industry thought leaders seeing the post and referencing it in posts on their own sites. These create natural links to a company’s site, and can greatly boost equity.
So, while social media isn’t currently directly impacting your site’s rankings, there are a variety of ways it can influence your visibility. Contact one of our experts today to learn more about boosting your visibility online!
