Impact of Social Media on Search Engine Optimization
Do you know that activity and user engagement on your social profiles affects search results? You can make your blog or website rank better in SERP by having healthy social engagement. Read on to know how to make your blog appear better in search results and How social media affects search engine optimization (SEO)?
Why Social Media is being given such a great importance? What might be the reason for its sharp growth and impact on our daily life? Hey, we are social animals after all and remember, everything goes social in a few years. So, its better to maintain a social relationship with the target whatever you are - a company or a blogger.
SEO and SMO works, draws more traffic and readers to your blog or website. No doubt this is a well known tactic and is being used by thousands of bloggers out there. Now I have a question to ask you. Do Social Media affect SEO? Your answer will surely be yes, but knowing how social media affects SEO is what we need to know. Okay, lets dive into the topic.
How your Social Activity is calculated?
Your activity i.e. the number of likes and shares to your posts on social media counts and is used to rank you on Google. More shares indicate that your posts are being read and have great value to the readers. Also the authority of people who shares your post is also considered along with the speed of shares. How many followers your account has on twitter and how many shares and like you're getting on Facebook ( and who is involved) decides your position in rankings.
Internet is a pool of information of which a more percentage is of no use to the people, I mean the searchers. So, what if a person Google for a topic A all the day long and found no useful information? I'm sure Google will get a negative ranking (of course, you too know this). So, those pieces of information(websites) which a majority of people found useful today will be ranked high, so that it helps the tomorrow's Googler. And Google is consider their engagement in a particular post or website through social media.
Another important factor considered to rank your blog is Authority i.e. indicator for the strength of your blog when ranked against comparable websites. This determines how well should you be ranked in Google's search results. If you could get one authoritative Google Plus member +1's you don't even have to worry about promotion. But that's not what you want now, you need to build an authority blog on your own. Remember, you can get more shares, likes or +1s by publishing information that could teach your visitors.
According to SEOMoz's According to SEOMoz's 2011 Search Engine Factors Ranking report 132 experts concluded that on page social signals and signals at domain level will have more impact on search rankings than the SEO factors we consider. Social media integration with search engines can affect your blog's rank and you can optimize your blog by understanding how the social data is used by SEs. Facebook however doesn't share their data, the activity and the user engagement is used by search engines to rank pages better. Twitter's integration with bing is a real example. Coming to Google Plus, as said by Chris Brogan "A social network from Google will surely affect search." The more you engage in Google plus in an ethical way, the better results you experience. Remember, more likes and shares doesn't guarantee better rank, qualitative and organic (authoritative activity on Google +) matters.Conclusion
So, this indicates that you should write for visitors not for Search Engines. SEO implementation with a Social perspective is what you should consider for your next post. I don't mean to say that you shouldn't consider traditional SEO, it has it's own importance at the end of the day. None of your followers on any social network should feel 'Oh, Yet another post.' Also, choose a different and innovative way to present yourself I mean your posts on social media because its what they like. Some bloggers neglect being social and also their audience when they reach their expectations. This is not a good sign so, make your audience engaged and be updated with what they like. Hope this helped you, drop your views below.
