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As businesses sector-wide look to enhance their digital presence and set themselves up for success in 2024, social media and search engine optimization (SEO) remain imperative.
Both channels serve a crucial purpose in helping businesses get the most out of their marketing strategies and help them achieve their goals, whether brand awareness and engagement, boosting conversions, or finding new target audience niches.
Recent developments in both the SEO and social media space have mandated that businesses take a more methodical approach to promoting their business online.
Long gone are the days when threading as many keywords and search terms into content as possible, and spamming social media pages with posts and notifications were considered ‘good practices’.
Nowadays, with billions of daily active users on Google, Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms, businesses have to maximize their potential on the channels that are going to make them as visible to as many prospective customers as possible.
A crucial ingredient to earning valuable customer trust and catering to a spectrum of prospects throughout the marketing funnel is to make content consistent and relevant channel-wide.
A common mistake that marketers make is viewing both SEO and social media as separate siloed strategies when there is often considerable overlap. One of the simplest ways to achieve that all-important alignment in marketing messaging and goals is to take advantage of social signals.
These can give businesses a huge boost and edge in a highly competitive space. It’s important to understand how social signals play a vital part in an SEO strategy, and how audience engagement on social channels can - directly and indirectly - lead to greater SEO performance.
First and foremost, we should clarify a common misconception among marketers and social media managers
Social Signals Are Not Ranking Factors, But They Help
Social signals essentially refer to any interaction with a social media profile or its content. From a marketing perspective, signals can simply refer to any activity that qualifies as engagement (such as shares, comments, likes, etc.) but from an SEO standpoint, they are small indicators that help search engines like Google understand the profile, post and user(s) in question.
Google has hundreds of ranking factors when determining how to place web pages in SERPs.
The most important ranking factors include relevant, informative quality content, while others include backlinks obtained from ethical digital PR and link building, keyword optimization, technical SEO, user experience, and scheme markup. SEO experts, however, agree and disagree about social signals’ role in Google’s ranking of pages.
The crux of the matter is that Google - the largest search engine in the world - doesn’t take social signals into account in its ranking algorithms. There are several reasons why that might be, given how social media is home to millions of spam and fake accounts, and how users can lawfully buy unlimited followers, likes, and subscribers.
It’s incredibly hard for social media platforms to filter through all the spam, which can only emphasize how difficult it must be for Google to identify legitimate social signals.
That said, in 2022 Google had expressed an intent to understand the authority of authors and creators that are present on social media. Much like how Domain Authority is an indicator of a trustworthy and credible website, the reputation of social media profiles serves a similar purpose in helping Google understand authorship.
Authorship itself is highly regarded in Google’s E-E-A-T methodology when assessing the validity and quality of content, which it deems to be the most important SEO ranking factor.
Though not direct ranking factors, strong social signals - from a combination of content and visuals - can still help a business stand out from the crowd in organic search rankings.
Google is undoubtedly paying attention to the social media pages of brands, and therefore, any organization that is trying to rank higher in organic search should not ignore social media completely.
How Social Signals Benefit SEO
Here's how social signals can benefit for the better visibility of your SEO:
Social Media Pages Can Still Rank Organically
It’s important to note that Google can still index social media pages, so an optimized business page on any social media platform can rank well in Google’s SERPs when searching for a branded keyword.
However, its ranking position is unaffected whether the page has a few hundred social media followers or tens of thousands, or whether content generates comments and shares in abundance whenever posted on social media feeds.
Google simply wants to connect websites with their respective social media pages and so is looking for signals that connect them. Branded search terms are important for SEO nonetheless, and thus if your business social media pages show up in a SERP when searching for your business or product name, it’s safe to assume Google recognizes it as strong and relevant.
As such, a strong social media presence in the SERPs can help build audience trust and drive clicks.
Building Awareness and Relevant Links
Sharing quality content on both a website domain and social media channels allows that content to reach a wider audience organically, bilaterally building more awareness of your brand and website.
When this content reaches more users across a spectrum of channels and platforms, there are more opportunities for them to engage with and link back to your content. If many links that point to a web page or site domain suggest that there is content that is piquing people’s interest, Google will take notice.
If the content is useful, relevant, inclusive, and trustworthy and exhibits good authorship (see above), Google will deem backlinks to be of higher quality and thus weigh that when determining a site’s Domain Authority.
Google is, however, unable to pass any link equity to a website if, for example, a link to an article was shared via social media. This doesn’t work in the same way that a website backlink does, which is domain-to-domain.
However, amplifying and sharing content on social media draws more eyes to that content organically, thus increasing the chances of earning backlinks and references from users who find that content valuable. In turn, this helps pages perform better in organic search over time through greater awareness.
Encouraging Engagement and Expertise Signals
Comments, likes, and shares of content that’s been distributed on social media collectively demonstrate an engaged audience and community around that content. Positive and organic user engagement indicates interest, trust, and satisfaction with the information shared, and that’s often reflected in a webpage’s analytics and traffic.
Often, there’s reason to believe that web pages that rank well in search also perform well on social media. However, there is no direct correlation to suggest that, as there are drastically different algorithms and audience data at play.
What this can lead to, however, is more informed marketing decisions by monitoring social media analytics and Google Analytics in detail. The most frequently shared or widely commented on social media content signifies user interest, engagement and value with specific subjects, which can then guide strategic content decisions and future planning.
Similarly, engagement dips or lack of activity signal weak content that doesn’t garner as much interest, and thus areas for improvement can be identified. Collectively, this all plays a valuable part in establishing and enhancing a robust social media and website content strategy.
How to Align and Improve Social Signals for SEO Success
While social signals do not directly factor into Google’s ranking algorithm, that is not to suggest that they don’t have value. Taking the time to improve social signals can indirectly have a positive effect on your business’s SEO and digital marketing efforts.
If you want to align and improve the social signals to your site and boost your SEO success (and in turn, your site’s rankings), then here are some easy tips to help you start:
- Link your website and social media profile pages together to help Google identify the reciprocal connection.
- Optimize your social profile pages ensuring the business indicators (brand name, address, phone number, location, assets, logos, etc.) are all consistent. Consider adding target keywords to evergreen areas of your social media profiles like your bio, services, and products sections.
- Promote compelling, high-quality content aimed at genuinely helping users (such as blogs, articles, videos, infographics, and so on) organically across social platforms to earn links and engagement.
- Add social plugins and HTML Open Graph meta tags to make your content more instantly shareable on social media without impacting its organic performance.
Conclusion
Social signals provide SEO value in a multifaceted way when leveraged as part of a broader omnichannel marketing strategy. Awareness, backlinks, engagement rates, authority, and user intent insights derived from externally promoted content all work together to provide on-page and off-page ranking boosts over time.
Marketers must, however, take great care to monitor and review social signals regularly and adjust SEO and content strategies accordingly. As the social media and SEO landscapes continue to evolve, staying abreast of all content indicators like relevance, trustworthiness, and expertise, will collectively shape strategies going forward.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are Social Signals Direct Ranking Factors for Google?
No, social signals are not direct ranking factors in Google's algorithms. However, Google is paying attention to the social media presence of brands and wants to understand the authority and reputation of content creators on these platforms.
How Can Social Signals Indirectly Benefit SEO?
There are several ways social signals can indirectly benefit SEO, including increasing brand awareness, driving more traffic, and earning backlinks from interested users. In addition, social signals can provide insights into content engagement to guide your content strategy, support a social media marketing campaign, and help to build trust and authority with audiences.
What Tips Are Given for Aligning Social Signals with SEO Efforts?
Establishing a strong connection between your website and social profiles will optimize your social profiles with consistent business information and target keywords. In this way, you can promote high-quality content organically on social platforms to earn engagement and ensure your content is shareable.
