The Importance of Social Media for SEO

What is Social Media? It is only Facebook and Twitter or it’s more than that. Social Media is all channels available in the web that allow us to come together, communicate, and build upon each other’s opinions and ideas. Also, Social Media can be utilized as a SEO (search engine optimization) tool in order to improve a website’s ranking in goggle, yahoo, or bing.

No doubt social media has a large influence on SEO. For example, if you Google a brand, such as “Coca Cola”, you will find that more than half of the links are influenced by social media; from LinkedIn, to Google reviews, Twitter streams and even blog postings. Social media plays a large part in the content displayed in the search engine results page.

Most social media sites link back to a particular web site, and even though a lot of sites have adapted no follow links (meaning you will not benefit from inbound links), they are increasing your visibility in the search engine results page.
So what does this mean?

Social media can and does influence search engine optimization. However, the goals for a brand may determine what strategy works best for them.

If your brand is already well established, you may want to leverage social media to help you optimize for other keywords and phrases. For example, if Coca-Cola decides they wante to enter the dessert game and offer a new drink, simply putting this new drink on their website may not be enough. As part of their marketing campaign they may leverage a blog to discuss the finer points of the new drink or even YouTube videos about how to make and enjoy the beverage. These social media tools in conjunction with a larger marketing campaign will help Coca-Cola rank for dessert ideas and new coke drinks.

On the other hand, a less well-known and established brand may take a different approach to utilizing social media for SEO. This may include a startup company looking to push their brand awareness. The startup company may focus all of their social media and communities on branded items that may assist to push their name to the top of the search engine results page and help fill out all of the results when someone searches for them.

Focusing strong efforts in some channels is definitely better than spreading your channels. I believe everyone should get a blog because that is the social media channel that anyone can most easily utilize to help influence search engine ranking.
Beyond a blog, if Facebook does not make sense for companies just wait until they use it. However, if Yelp or Twitter does make sense for them, make sure to not only leverage that but to build those communities into strong locations for the brand.

Finally, it is important to understand Social Media, the different channels available in the web, and how this practice affects SEO. It is not enough just to have a website if you do not attract visitors to it.