Does Social Media Impact SEO?

Well, you will find never-ending opinions and answers to this often-debated question

However, one thing is clear. If you get significant traffic from Bing, then social media for sure affects your SEO.

Bing has made it clear that Bing’s algorithm considers social media profiles for ranking. 

Unlike Google which only confused people with its flipping answers on the same.

History of Social media and SEO

Back in 2010, Matt Cutts - former head of search quality at Google - announced that Google's search algorithm considers social signals to rank the website. 

But, in 2014, Matt Cutts himself released a video denying that social signals - which indicates a profile’s authority - have nothing to do with the website rankings. 

This threw digital marketers into a dilemma. All this while, they had been assuming that Google’s search algorithm does consider the social profiles as an indication of trustworthiness.

We are never going to know anything about the search algorithm unless Google has told us. And Google, for the most part, did not tell us what factors are used for ranking.

Hence, we rely on the correlations. That is, we try to express the extent to which two variables are linearly related. In this case, the two variables are social media and SEO.

Correlations are important as they tell us the properties of the high- ranking websites. It becomes easier for other sites to follow suit.

One such correlation study by Hootsuite showed that content with high social shares received a 22% boost in Google rankings. 

Later,  research published by OptinMonster in 2019 concurred with the earlier findings of Hootsuite.

From these correlations, it can be assumed that although social signals may not directly affect your site rankings, they do have an indirect or a less tangible impact on your site. 

Below are a few important ways they both go hand in hand.

1.

Good content published consistently is still the baseline

When good content is published which can start a conversation and engage people, there are high chances that people make it to your site through social platforms. 

Although this may not directly help in ranking the site, these things may help in boosting the domain authority and improving the backlinks.

2.

You Can Expand The Reach Of Your Content

You can repurpose the high-quality blog content you have been publishing, and publish it on social channels. 

Giving a taste of the longer article can make them click back to your site. 

3. You Can Prevent Your Content From Getting Lost

A poorly promoted content, how well it may have been written, will be lost and found by none. 

Social media channels are search engines by themselves, although for their own content. Hence, optimize the metadata and make your content visible.

4. Social Media Can Be An Amplifier For Your Content

When a piece of content goes viral on social media, greater chances are that more people will visit your site. More Traffic. More backlinks. Better domain authority!

Conclusion:

It is essential to learn these social media techniques, and even more beneficial is to get started with them.

Let us know the social media strategy that worked best for your website!