Social media is an integral part of SEO, especially since the Panda and Penguin updates. In fact, social media is probably the most important thing that any business has to pay attention to nowadays, as it forms part of what is known as social proof. Social proof is basically how much of an authority your site is in its field and how popular it is amongst users. To illustrate the importance of social media on SEO today, you will note that a social report has been added to Google Analytics which measures on site user engagement, tracks conversions and compares traffic patterns also shows how active your website is across various social media platforms. If you are looking at how social media effects SEO, you should look at the following aspects.
How Social Media Improves Traffic to your Website
Many people nowadays use social media sites including Facebook and the like. In fact, most people enjoy spending time on their social media and networking profiles, and this means that your business should have a voice on these sites. The more people you can get to follow your business comments on social media sites, watch your videos, and like your pictures, the more these people will follow links to your website. This improves and increases your back linking which will boost your SEO.
Recommendations
Because of the social proof that Google now uses to rate your website, recommendations are important for improving the authority factor to your website. With social media sites linked to your website it will help to have your clients and customers rating your products, commenting on your business and just getting a general increase in conversation rate for your business. All of this will help your SEO dramatically as now you have social proof; you have become an author authority on your subject. Google and other search engines will look at the number of people you follow and the number of people following you, as well as how many likes you have compared to other sites of the same type and rank you accordingly. If you are competing for top position with a similar site and you have more likes, then your site will have a higher ranking.
Personalized Searches
People finding your website through a personalized search helps your SEO and Google ranking. Personalized searches have a big impact on click-through rates, as people tend to trust references from people in their social circles as opposed to search engines. With 100 million users on Google Plus and over 800 million active users on Facebook, the ability to share content on social platforms can have a huge impact on traffic to a website. This is why it is important to include social sharing buttons on your website to make it easier for people to share your content with others.
Ensure that you have Good Content
With social media being important for the SEO process, it is a given that good quality content is important as well. The content on your website or blog is more crucial than ever because the entire point of improving your social proof is to get people to share your content and if you have poor content no one will share it. The content does not necessarily have to be stuffed with keywords like before. In fact you should not overuse keywords at all. It is recommended that your keyword density is between 1 and 2%.
Viral Marketing
It is important using your various social media networks to build relationships with your customers and clients and this in turn will lead you to get more customers. New customers will find you through their friends and through friends of friends. This is what it means to go viral, and this is what you want in order for your SEO to improve and your ranking to improve.
The Introduction of Google Plus
One of the other ways that Google has jumped on the social media band wagon is through the introduction of their own social media platform, Google Plus. This integration is important for your website, and it even shows in the Google search results, as a little plus 1 button on the side. It is therefore important to have a Google Plus account for SEO.
These are just some of the ways that social media effects SEO and why social media is so vital nowadays.
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