In our modern world, social media is now one of the phone number list first places many customers interact with businesses. But what's really interesting to note is that social media now has a strong influence on consumer search behavior – and some platforms are turning themselves into real search engines. In fact, 54% of social media phone number list users researched new brands and their products specifically through a social platform. By now, all good marketers know that social media plays an extremely important role in the marketing mix of B2B and B2C organizations. But many fail to see the phone number list connection between social media and SEO.
To be clear here, social media is not a direct SEO hack. However, in terms phone number list of social media's influence on search engine optimization, the lines are still a bit blurry. In 2010, Google and Bing stated that social signals were phone number list used to determine SERP rankings. However, Twitter temporarily blocked Google's access in 2014, causing a backlash that led phone number list to Google announcing it was changing its policy on social signals. But although Google has stated that social media has no direct impact on SEO, it still seems to have an effect phone number list on search engine ranking factors.
Importance of social media for SEO
First, social media influences SEO factors because it can give a business more credibility and visibility – two of the phone number list most important ranking signals Google uses. One of the most basic rules of SEO is to increase the number of internal and external links phone number list as well as brand mentions and keywords in order to increase visibility. The phone number list more active your company's social media platforms are, the more prominent your web presence will be - and these accounts will often show up on the SERPs when your brand name is entered:
Search engines are constantly trying to provide their users with the phone number list most relevant results, such as providing an answer to a question. Social media posts (especially videos) can be used for these results. For example, when you search for "How to clean roof gutters", the top results are all YouTube videos - thanks to the partnership phone number list of Google and YouTube. So, if a social post can clearly answer the searcher's question or contains similar keyword wording, it can show up as a search result.
It's also worth noting that while Google apparently doesn't use social media as a ranking factor, Bing still does. Google certainly has the phone number list biggest market share in terms of online search engines, but keep in mind that around 25% of all queries in 2018 were handled by Microsoft's service. So it's clear that social media comes into play in one form or another – and phone number list marketers should pay attention and incorporate social media tactics into their SEO strategies. While using social media can't guarantee your phone number list business a top spot in the SERPs, it can help in a number of ways.