Why social media is important for SEO

SEO has evolved so much from the late ’90s where stuffing keywords into the “keyword” tag would suffice, it has moved on from the age of purpose built directories in India and Russia, and progressed on from the Google bombing era where you influence the rank of a given key term just by building hundreds of links around a keyword or phrase. All these have arisen because users have tried to find a quick fix or loophole in system. But throughout these SEO ages two things have never changed – both links and content have always been paramount; it’s just today search engines like Google are going to great lengths to stop the spammers and users who are after a quick gain in rankings.

To this end the social media platforms have become more and more relevant and powerful in the SEO process. Google sees the social media platforms as real people, talking and interacting with other people. Coming across great content and sharing it with friends, those friends sharing it with their friends and so on; but the one thing that hasn’t changed for your site to rank well in the search engines is great content, and then quality recommendation’s/links promoting that content to be shared.

Social media has become a very powerful and well respected platform for building links. One reason for this is that links via these channels carry a lot of authority, through the fact that Google see these as real people and, therefore, real people sharing your content. As well as this, social media channels increase the authority of the domain, which increase the rankings of those pages within the search engines. Furthermore, social media helps to drive great quality targeted traffic to the site, this can only be a win-win situation.

So if you want your site to have good rankings for your chosen keywords, research your subject well, write great content, whether it be good history about your subject, helpful information that users are looking to find answers for, or simply great descriptions for all your products. Then all you have to do is share these pages on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google + and the viral nature of social media will take over, helping to raise brand awareness, increase the authority of your site and, more importantly, drive traffic to the site.

So if you think there is a short sharp fix to gaining good rankings within Google, there is, create compelling or helpful content and let the social media channels do the rest.

If you think your company doesn’t need social media, think again; people will research, talk and interact with any subject, however niche it is, and the first place they will look is on social media where they can interact with different users to gain information. If that information is good enough they will promote it through shares and likes, and every time someone promotes it you are building authority for your site without even trying.

So sort your social media profiles out now, and get interacting with your audience…