The Connection between Social Sharing and SEO

By Guest Author -
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Social Signal
Social Media

What have you noticed about our virtual world these days?

Surely, you must have observed that billions of individuals are already turning to the Internet to obtain some (if not, plenty) of their needs. Most of the time, they search for the following:

  • Information
  • Services
  • Products
  • Entertainment

No matter your domain’s niche or purpose, you need to apply particular strategies in order to be one of the first websites your target audience spots.

So how can you ensure this?

Of course, you know that SEO helps greatly. With the right mix of strategies and tools, you can bring your content to the top search results page.

But do you know that you need more than optimisation to get a high ranking these days?

Apart from using keywords, building or earning links, placing tags, etc., you require social media boost.

Now, why do several online marketing experts call it as such and why do they recommend it?

To help you understand its importance to SEO, let us have a look at the following research findings.

The Statistics

  • Approximately 62% of adult Web users around the globe are on various social media channels.
  • Around 22% of the time spent on the Internet is dedicated to social networking making it the most engaged activity online.
  • An estimated 53% of small to medium-sized businesses and 90% of marketers are on social channels too.
  • Smartphone users spend an average of 24 minutes daily on their social apps.

Based on these numbers, you can see the huge influence of activities like blogging, participating in forums and discussion boards, social networking, etc.

But how do they relate to search engine optimisation?

To answer this question, check out these insights.

Social Signals

Most of the time, these include the following:

  • Facebook Shares and Likes
  • Google Plus +1
  • Social network comments
  • Number of Twitter Followers
  • Retweets
  • Mentions in post updates
Social Signal
Social Media

Generally, these are votes used to gauge user engagement and marketing success in social media. Additionally, top engines (e.g. Google, Bing, and Yahoo) consider these when ranking a particular site. This means that the more signals you obtain, the greater likelihood it is of landing in the top SERP.

Google+

The introduction of the Web giant’s social networking service has changed SEO greatly. Nowadays, you can see Google Plus profiles and posts appearing in search results for specific key terms. There is no surprise for this turnaround given that Google has been intending to combine organic and personalised queries.

Your Plus page has a high likelihood of ranking in SERPs too, especially if it has several +1’s from the people in your circles.

Secondary Links

You know that you can get backlinks as editorial votes, right? When other website owners consider your content highly valuable, relevant, engaging, they will link back to your site.

Social sharing can do the same for you too. How? You can generate links whenever some users do the following:

  • Tag you in their posts or comments
  • Include your webpage URL in their updates or messages
  • Share or suggest your website content to their friends or followers

You can do this on your own too—place links in posts or comments. However, you have to follow these rules.

  • Avoid excessive linking in your social page updates.
  • Give your URL only when asked for it.

The latter usually happens after starting a conversation with the users and gaining their trust.

Always take note of these standards because boosting online visibility is mostly about credibility, influence, popularity, and authority.

When you are able to acquire these from your target audience, your social media and search engine marketing campaign will benefit greatly.

Conclusion

What do you think? Is social sharing important to SEO? What are your thoughts on the topic? Feel free to tell us about your own insights.

About the Author: Emma Tomlinson is the Head of Retail at Smart Traffic, an SEO Bristol company that provides search marketing solutions to SMEs and large companies around the globe.

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12 COMMENTS

  1. Hi social media whether I we or anybody likes it is now as important a key to a succesful site as any other aspect of the Internet. I have been slow in embracing it but am now grabbing hold of it with both hands. I am in total aggreance with you that social media is only going to get more important.

    Thanks lee

  2. Hello Emma
    After google has rolled out panda and penguin updates,social sharing is also considered in SERP,I believe that we should not totally depend on Google for traffic,we should always keep an alternatives and social networking sites fits best,Anyway thanks for sharing this wonderful article.

    • Hi Ashish. Thanks!

      Social signals definitely play a huge part because these indicate that a lot of users are engaging through social media, which is an important tool these days.

  3. I have to agree with Emma, to a certain extent. Social signals will certainly have a growing impact on search engine rankings in the future.

    However, some people put too much focus on the “end result” which is a +1, a Like or a Tweet. And they forget the reason why people are sharing their content on social media…

    It’s not about getting as many as possible! It’s all about getting quality content that people WANT to share with their network.

    • Hi Dukeo.
      I agree with regards to producing quality content because social shares usually follow when the content is good.

  4. This is Wonderful articles! Yes i agree with this articles. social media is apart of seo. To increase the page ranking and to get the more traffic on your sites.then we use it.which is most important.Well thanks for this post.

  5. Social sharing helps in increasing our seo and making us more visibe quickly on the very 1st page on google search. Thus both are interlinked.

  6. I definitely think that social signals will have a big role to play in the future of SEO. For businesses it is vital that they are using Google+ and have a business page on that particular social network.

    • Yes, Google+ is very important, especially since Google is the top search engine, based on number of total visits. Of course, we must not forget other top social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest given that these are among the leading social services nowadays.

      Thanks for your comment, Steven. 😉

Comments are closed.