The question of whether social networks have an impact on SEO has been discussed in various groups and forums for several years.
In 2010, both Google and Bing search engines admitted to using social signals to help rank pages in their results.
Four years later, this position changed and Twitter temporarily blocked Google’s access to its social network. In 2014, Matt Cutts, Google’s former head of web spam, released a video explaining why Google can’t trust the signals sent by social networks.
Since 2014, Google has publicly denied social influence on rankings. But now it is 2021. A lot has changed in the last 6 years. A significant change is that social networks play a much stronger role in search engines.
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Why are social networks important for our site?
The fact of the matter is that in today’s world you need to promote your content and products on social media in order to succeed in online marketing, increase brand awareness and encourage users to enter your website.
To be more precise, no content plan and strategy is complete without the use of social networks; Because forgetting this valuable marketing channel will not only leave potential customers out of your sight, but also differentiate you from your competitors.
In the words of Jay Baer: Social media is the fuel to ignite your content.
According to the 2013 report of Marketing Performance Institute, marketers usually use five social media to distribute content. Whether you are starting to work with social media to publish your website content or reviewing and revising existing designs, this article will be very suitable for you.
Direct effects of social networks on site SEO
A large number of SEO experts believe that social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn directly or indirectly affect your site’s SEO. Promoting content or placing a site link in them can have an acceptable effect on your site’s rank and the credibility of your domain.
The amount of interaction of users in these social networks with your content, including visits, likes, shares and comments, can significantly improve the amount of this effect.
Apart from these input items that you put through the links on social media, it can play an important role in improving your ranking.
Note: Some people think that the above methods are sufficient for SEO. But it is important to mention that all that will be discussed in this content will serve as a supplement for your engine fuel. The basic principles of SEO including technical SEO, content strategy and external SEO are still the main arms for the growth of your site.
We do use Facebook and Twitter links in web search ranking.
Matt Cutts
Of course, it should be noted that a few years later, Google rejected this statement and officially stated that it does not use social networks for website ranking.
But what we have seen from social networks and its impact on site SEO in these years has made these claims a little invalid.
Strong reasons of the influence of social signal on SEO site
Website or a social network
Before social networks are an application on your mobile phone, they are a reliable site with high page authority and domain, and outgoing links (especially if introduced by different profiles) will have a positive impact on your site’s SEO. But it does not have a competitive advantage!
Credit brings credit
Suppose a doctor specializing in the field of genetics shares his latest scientific materials and findings on LinkedIn or Twitter (English) and by this means, he has gained credibility and a significant number of users.
Now, this influencer will undoubtedly use the credit he has built for himself with just a blog post on a website and a link to his LinkedIn account. This issue directly shows the effect of social signals on site ranking.
Google and Twitter; good friends
According to the statistics provided by Google in 2015, Google’s intelligent robots have the ability to access Twitter data. To understand this in a more tangible way, just search the name of a person who has a Twitter account (doesn’t need to be famous) in Google to come across the media that the person has shared or responded to in his account. !
Note: It should be noted that these strong relationships are not only limited to Twitter, and with the increasing use of social networks, Google’s cooperation with these emerging search engines is not at all far-fetched.
Note: In explaining the above, it is important to mention that many social networks such as Facebook or Instagram have almost become a powerful search engine and operate in parallel with Google. The fact that sometimes results from Instagram are shown to you on Google’s search engine, intersections of these two paths can be considered from different angles. Simply influencing the content or visiting Google’s algorithms from these social networks is an incomplete claim.
Indirect influence of social networks on site SEO
Increase brand awareness
If I were to define brand awareness with an example, I would ask you to name three sports shoe brands very quickly without thinking. Probably brands such as Adidas, Nike, Puma, etc. can be seen in this list. Brands that have reached the highest degree of brand awareness.
Continuing to produce appropriate content on social networks with a focus on a specific target community in the long term can differentiate your business in terms of brand awareness and brand popularity compared to competitors. This will make your users remember your name immediately if they need the services you are providing, and in addition to recommending to others, they will also directly enter your website and thus increase your organic traffic. which will ultimately help to increase the SEO of your site.
Better communication with customers
Today, many people reflect their positive or negative experiences in using a company’s product or service on social networks. If you, as a business that definitely has a valuable goal in mind such as gaining customer trust and satisfaction, want to maintain your relationship with customers, see them, control emotions and if the user is satisfied with them Appreciate, your presence in social networks is of great importance. This will greatly help the popularity and awareness of your brand.
The best social networks to get social signals
With more than a billion active users, Facebook is one of the best social networks that you can use to publish content, interact with users, and more.
Some practical tips for an effective presence on Facebook:
- Using attractive and high-quality images (either in content creation or product promotion)
- Send short messages. The detail of the content does not attract the user as much as it should in this social network.
- Regular publication of posts
- Use optimized descriptions and tags
- Consider competitive campaigns and promotional activities.
Another best social network that can bring you significant organic traffic is Twitter.
Storytelling, keeping up with the trends of the day, optimal use of hashtags, etc. are some of the things that will influence the increase of user interaction with the page and ultimately your website.
Youtube
To distribute video content to your audience, in addition to social networks such as Instagram, which we will talk about, you can also publish it on platforms such as YouTube.
One of the best advantages of YouTube is that this content distribution network is one of Google’s products, and in this sense, the growth of your channel and the interaction of users with your specialized videos will have a direct impact on the site’s SEO.
Some important points about YouTube:
- Be sure to enable the embedding feature so that others can upload your video on their website.
- The videos should be concise and useful without exaggeration.
This social network is now more than a collection for business contacts and is a complete platform for publishing specialized content.
Some important things to keep in mind regarding LinkedIn:
- Create a professional page for which you can use video.
- Encourage employees to join the page.
- In this social network, quality is more important than quantity.
- Make the best use of user recommendations and comments. Unlike other social networks, comments and criticisms are expressed very respectfully and professionally in LinkedIn.
Instagram is currently the most powerful social network for sharing photos in cyberspace, and with this growth rate, it will become an image search engine in the not-so-distant future. Considering the presence of most businesses on Instagram, having a targeted content production and publishing strategy on this social network has a significant impact on increasing the participation rate of users and increasing brand awareness. Users can also be directed to the website from the story section.