SEO: 5 reasons social media helps you rank in Google
It’s always great to have friends, and here at Orfi Media we have loads. Today we have a guest post from our pal Matt Pyke, founder of Fly High Media.
There are between 500 – 600 algorithm changes in Google each year. This is quite astounding and IMPOSSIBLE to keep up with.
Luckily, Social Media is not a direct ranking factor when Google’s bots crawl your website. No matter how many people share your article, Google doesn’t take this into account and rank you any higher. HOWEVER, there is often a correlation with highly shared and engaging articles with their rankings in search engines.
The amplification that social media can provide for your content is amazing, both from a paid and organic point of view. With the amplifications possibilities, they can really help you rank in Google.
Here are the 5 reasons why you need social media to help with ranking in Google.
_BRAND AWARENESS
When you share content on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc and it is high quality, people will notice it. They will stop whatever they are doing in the day to read your content.
“How does this help with my ranking in Google?”
If people continually see your content and like what they see, then they will start to feel familiar with you. How many times have you seen a brand on social media and then searched for them on Google?
This is not only good for website traffic but Google also likes it when people type in branded queries (your business’ name). They want to show the most popular results to their users. So, the more times people are typing in your company name then the more it adds to your website.
The more people that search for something and then click on your website after seeing it, the more it increases the click-through-rate (CTR). Which again signals to Google that you are a quality site. We will come back to this in a point later.
You need to submit your sitemap to Google, without this your visibility automatically becomes more difficult. You will find that if there are other brands with the same name then there is a chance they may outrank you.
_LINK BUILDING OPPORTUNITIES
Backlinks are one of the single most important factors when trying to rank your website in Google. When another website links to your website, this says to search engines that you are popular.
However, gone are the days of getting thousands and thousands of backlinks pointing to your website. It is more of a case of acquiring backlinks from high quality sources. It is better to get 5 high quality backlinks rather than 5000 spammy links.
“What is the connection between link building and social media?”
The bigger your audience on your social platforms, the bigger the chance there is for people to link to your content. Each time you publish content, the real hard work should begin to build some links.
To build more links which maximise the exposure of your content:
- Post your content into relevant Facebook Groups
- Use paid advertising to target people who like other similar pages in your niche.
- When writing a blog use external links to quote authors that you have cited. Track them down on Twitter and share article with them and tag them.
The more eyes on your content from your niche, the more likely that they are to link to you. You just have to make sure the content is relevant to the person you are reaching out to.
Get content ideas from your favourite blogs, for example in the social media niche you may look at Social Media Examiner.
Check out what is hot on their website and simply write better content than what they are providing. If they write an article called “7 Top Tips to Get More Likes on Facebook” then you write one called “20 Top Tips to Get More Likes on Facebook”.
See how many shares articles have and if there is a good number of shares then you know it is a hot topic. After you have written your blog, promote the blog using Facebook Ads and target specific blogs under interests.
If you go to Twitter and type in called “7 Top Tips to Get More Likes on Facebook” on the search bar you will see some people who have shared the article that you are competing against. Follow that account and they when they follow back they see your new improved guide when you posted it.
You can use paid tools such as BuzzSumo to get more in-depth social sharing data, but this is a whole new topic.
_CHANCE TO OPTIMISE METADATA
Click-through-rate (CTR) is a big factor in search rankings today. The more people who see your content in search results and click on them, the higher your CTR. The key is to capture the user with an attractive page title and description.
You only have a short amount of characters for each which is why you need to make the most of them and tell the user exactly what you do as quickly as possible.
“What does this have to do with social media?”
If you are regularly posting articles on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn then you have a chance to test the title tags and meta descriptions.
If you re-post an article several times per month let’s say, mix up the titles and descripts and see which gets the most clicks. This gives you a powerful insight into what readers respond best to.
With the growth of AI and the implication of the algorithm update Rank Brain, copy should be written for people to read, not just to tick boxes on Google. Measure which posts got the most clicks and learn from the way in which they are written for future posts.
_REVIEWS
As a business, credibility is everything. You must have the online presence to back up everything you have done. This is especially important for local businesses.
Google can gather reviews on your Facebook page and make them show up in your search results.
This reassures people researching services or your brand that they are in capable hands.
Google also takes Google My Business reviews and although not confirmed, businesses that are rated higher tend to perform a lot better.
Again, this is because Google likes popular websites.
_GOOD USER EXPERIENCE = MORE SALES
As previously mentioned, AI is becoming more of a factor in search results.
You must make sure that the user has a great experience. Within SEO there is something called Conversion Rate Optimisation which is also known as CRO for short.
This is the process of testing and designing web pages to help with conversions.
Conversion rate optimisation is important in social because you will often be driving traffic to a dedicated landing page.
On the dedicated landing page, there is usually one goal and one goal only. To get results.
You can drive all of the traffic in the world to a web page but if it’s not built with the user in mind then you will never convert.
Your landing page will suck if:
- It is slow
- The Call-to-action is not clear
- You are asking for too much information
- There is too much copy
- Poorly written copy
- Too many options to click off the page
- No optimised for mobile
Make sure that you test your landing page, you can do A/B split tests on the pages from social traffic. Then in the future, you can also use that page to rank in organic or PPC results in Google.
So there we go! This is all you need to know about how you can use SEO techniques with social media to get better results online.
_KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Make content so valuable that people will Google you after reading it
- Build your social media following either organically or with ads to amplify your content
- Reach out to influencers in your space and present your content
- Test out your metadata
- Ask your past and current clients to leave reviews on your Facebook account
- Make sure you build a solid website with an awesome user experience.
Matt is the founder of Fly High Media, a digital marketing agency specialising in social and organic search. Read his blog for more tips, tricks & strategies. You can also follow Matt on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.