Does Social Media Affect SEO?
Whilst social media profiles aren’t a ‘ranking factor’ per se, they definitely have an impact on your SEO strategy.
Social media is often an integral part of many businesses’ marketing campaign and, as you can imagine, we get a lot of questions around how much time and effort should really be going into these platforms – and if it’s really worth it. So, let’s take you through it. Here are some of the ways social media can affect your SEO.
Building Trust Signals
If you’ve ever searched for a product or service from a new company, it’s likely that you’ll have wanted to confirm the trustworthiness of the organisation before making a purchase or getting in touch with them.
How did you do this? Probably through checking mentions of their website across the web – including their social media platforms.
By having regularly updated social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn, you’re showing users that your business is active and ready to engage with their audience. From showcasing your amazing customer service to updating customers with new products or services, you’re building trust signals for both the user and a search engine who is crawling your profile.
And remember, trust is very important when it comes to high ranking positions.
Search Engines Crawl Social Media, Too!
On that note – your social media profiles will also appear in the search engine results page.
A simple search for Echo Web Solutions brings up our website in the #1 position, alongside our Facebook profile in #2. Google has found multiple mentions of our business across the web, increasing trust and authority of our brand and its general online visibility within the search engine results page.
What’s the best part about this? Google is also displaying our Facebook review rating for everyone to see!
Top Tip: Make sure your social media platforms are well managed. You’re going to want consistent information across all platforms which are packed full of fantastic reviews. However, you’ll need to monitor your review rating. If this reflects badly on your business, it may detract users from clicking onto your website. This is where a social media and review strategy can have a huge impact on SEO and traffic.
Local SEO
Speaking of reviews and consistent information, social media platforms can work very well as part of your Local SEO strategy.
If you’re a local brick-and-mortar business or retailer, you’ll probably be aware of the importance of citations and online directories.
Social media platforms can work just the same. It’s a known fact that reviews play a very big role on local SEO performance. In addition to this, your NAP (name, address and phone number) across the web can have a big impact on your rankings and online visibility, so make sure they are consistent and correct.
And have you thought about geo-tagging your posts? Social media can help you connect with a local audience and uncover new customers! For example, you should consider tagging your location in an Instagram post to reach users browsing their local area.
They are Search Engines
Finally, let’s not forget that social media platforms are search engines themselves.
With the ability to find new businesses and directly search and shop for products, keeping your profiles regularly-updated and optimised is crucial.
Putting all these factors together, it’s clear that social media builds trust for your brand, highlights reviews and increases mentions of your business across the web. Having a social media platform and leaving it to its own devices will not positively impact your online visibility. It’s worth investing your time creating a strong strategy to keep each platform active and consistent and it will no doubt work seamlessly alongside your SEO strategy and increase your oh-so valuable traffic.
