As an SEO specialist, I’m frequently asked if social media shares affect SEO. Yes, social media shares can indirectly impact your search engine rankings in some situations. Despite not being part of the search algorithm, we still recommend sharing new content on social media for SEO benefits.
Social shares matter to search engines
Search engines can track shares for use in their ranking algorithms. This makes sense because the point of having search algorithms is to help important, helpful and high-quality content get found as easily as possible. Sharing a post generally means that something is useful or interesting, so what better way to determine what people want to read than by looking at how many people share an article?
Even though it makes sense for social shares to be a direct ranking factor, most SEO experts agree that Google doesn’t consider them for its rankings. Despite this, there’s a chance that they still might. Google has an extremely complex search algorithm, and they aren’t always upfront about what factors matter because they don’t want people to cheat the system.
Social shares also indirectly affect SEO rankings
Industry studies have found that content that has more social shares tends to rank higher. There are three indirect ways social shares benefit your SEO.
- Generating user data. Google relies heavily on user metrics such as time spent on the page, bounce rate and engagement to determine if users find the page useful. These user metrics are 100% part of its algorithm. Gaining users from your social media is a good way to get the right audience viewing your content.
- Influencing your brand’s expertise. More active social channels contribute to one of the most important ranking factors — especially for the medical, health and nutrition industries — which is known as Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (E-A-T).
- Backlinks. Getting backlinks is vital to your page’s rank. People need to find your post before they can link to it.
Overall, more visibility will have a cumulative effect on your ranking, and social media is a great way to do this.
How Publicity.com can help you get more shares
If you want to improve your search ranking by increasing social media shares, you’ll need a strong social media presence. One of our first actions will be to ensure that social sharing is built into your page. This enables people to share your content without leaving your site.
When designing a social media strategy for SEO purposes, our digital marketing pros will help you select social media sites based on your target audience and services. For example, if your site works well with photos and has a younger target audience, Instagram is a must-have.
To get the most shares, the biggest factor is having good content and eye-catching posts. Our graphic artists can create high-quality images. Our content marketing writers will create content that impresses readers once they click on your link. Our goal is to get people to your site however possible.
We recognize that building a big social media presence takes time. You need to post often, respond directly to people, and engage with others’ posts. This will help increase your number of active followers. As a branch of your marketing team, Publicity.com can perform a lot of these tasks on your behalf. We can schedule your posts, and provide professional listening and engagement services.
Using social media to improve your SEO ranking can help a little bit, but it’s far from the only SEO success factor. Find out what else you should do to get your site on the first page of search engines by using this form or calling us at 952-697-5269.
