The Relationship Between Social Medial & SEO

Social media accounts are web pages in themselves. As such, Google can use them just as they would any other web page. While having a social media account or posting regularly doesn’t in itself help your organic rankings, some signals are sent from these accounts which can influence what appears on the search results page.

However, the way people buy and make decisions online is more nuanced. A customer’s journey is not always linear. In fact, it hardly is these days. People interact with your brand in many different ways online, from finding you through Google to following your business page on social media to signing up for your email newsletter. Many people will hit various touch points with your brand before deciding to buy from you, read more of your content or sign up for your services.

Links, links, and more links

Link building has long been a priority when it comes to SEO. Back in the days before blogging and content,  it was all about the links – the good, the bad and the ugly.

These days, links from high authority websites are the most desirable. By creating accounts on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google My Business, you’re getting some pretty easy links right there from some of the most authoritative websites in the world.

Links From Content Sharing

Everyone wants their posts to go viral on social media. If you write a great post on your blog and then share the URL on social media, there’s a much bigger chance of your blog being picked up and shared.

If you have posts that link back to your website that resonate with people, chances are they’re going to share it. Facebook and Twitter make it super easy for users to hit share or retweet. The more your content is shared on social media, the more links to your content are being created.

Driving Traffic To Your Website

Sharing your content isn’t just valuable for adding a link on social media. It’s a great way to drive traffic to your website. If you’re getting a good number of website visitors from any source, it can act as a sign to Google that your website is worth visiting, and therefore worth returning as a search result.

What about driving traffic to your website via Facebook ads? According, Facebook Ads, and any other paid social media, don’t influence your SEO, even Google’s very own Google Ads don’t influence SEO.

That’s good to know, but what about hashtags? Surely they impact SEO!

In short, no. Google hasn’t embraced hashtags in its ranking algorithm. They service to better classify content within social networks, but have little to no influence on SEO.