How Social Media Impacts Your Rankings

Connectica • August 10, 2015 • SEO

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Social Media Impact on Search Engines Rankings

It is hard to escape social media these days. If it is not Facebook and Twitter that you are hearing about, it is Instagram and Snapchat. While you might think that social media is not helping your company by boosting sales, that doesn’t mean that social media platforms are not important in your overall business plan.

Major search engines actually use information from social media sights in order to determine the ranking they attribute to your website. For example, a search engine may use Twitter to help determine a website ranking by factoring in the number of tweets and retweets belonging to a specific URL.

Search engines will also consider the people that are tweeting/retweeting. If any of them are considered authorities on the subject matter, that will also factor in on website ranking. Search engines also use Facebook and Instagram in a similar fashion. The number of likes/shares will help determine the ranking.

In addition to the number of tweets/retweets and the number of likes/shares helping determine website rankings, search engines will also determine the amount of quality followers/friends that a user has when determining rankings. The more followers/friends usually mean the greater the quality audience (no spam accounts or computer generated or bought followers/friends) and the larger the distribution of the URL.

Overall, the more information that is shared about your company and website across any form of social media, the better your rankings will be from the major search engines. Any social media posts increase the possibility of driving traffic to your website and improving your credibility.

Also, it is best to post new and relevant content to your social media accounts often. The more active your accounts, as long as the information is relevant and it is quality information being posted, the better your chances at improving your website ranking.

There are some social media posts that are better than others and are more likely to engage the audience. Here are tips for improving your social media posts in order to increase your search engine rankings:

Use Images: It is reported that you can get up to 200% more engagement with social media posts that include a picture. However, not just any image will do. It should be a relevant image that will interest your target audience. Research also shows that photos are more likely to get retweets.

Engage Your Audience: Asking your audience to participate is another great way to draw more attention to your social media accounts. Having a contest for your followers to participate in, or simply asking for ideas, opinions, or advice on a relevant topic, is a good way to engage your audience and create traffic.

Timing: There has also been research and articles on the best time to post to social media in order to achieve the highest amount of engagements. Whether you are using Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or another type of social media platform, you should do some research and find out the best times, and the most ideal days, to make your posts.

There is no point in avoiding social media. It is here to stay. What we can do is determine the best way to use it so that it helps increase search engine rankings.

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