Social Media and Site Performance

Here’s How and Why Your Search Marketing Strategy Needs to Include Social and Quality Content, Despite what Google and Others Claim

It’s true that search engine optimisation is just one piece of the internet marketing pie and that there’s much more required for online domination than rising to the top of the search engine rankings.  Social media plays a vital role, allowing businesses to interact with existing and prospective customers, popularising their brands and presenting the ‘human element’ that’s necessary for building trust and authority in an industry.

But, as Google and others have claimed, social media activity doesn’t actually have a direct influence on rankings, meaning  their algorithms don’t use social to determine a site’s position in the search rankings. Now, before you jump up and down with excitement, thinking that your days of tweeting and Facebook posting are over,  social media combined with quality content can and will affect your site’s performance. Here’s how:

Social Activity: the Bull’s-Eye Your Search Engine Marketing Strategy Needs to Stand Out

Even though Google and Bing representatives recently reiterated at SMX London that their search algorithms don’t use social media activity, or a lack there of, to determine a site’s place in the rankings, they did say that when content receives several Facebook Likes, is pinned repeatedly or shared in any other way through available social media channels, search engine bots are drawn to the activity like bees to honey. This, in effect, can cause a page on a site to be indexed faster than a page that lacks social media ‘buzz.’  

But that’s not all. If a page is shared repeatedly through social media, it’s not a stretch to assume that people who find the content valuable will link to it from their own sites or make other references to it online. This, in effect, adds to the web of links leading to the site where the content originated. Google and Bing representatives alluded to the fact that the search engines actually use the number of social references to determine if such links are quality, something which is beneficial to a site’s overall performance, especially in a post-Penguin world.

What this Means for Your Search Marketing Efforts

In short, continuing to produce high quality content that’s worthy of being shared with people’s followers and connections  in places like Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest will enhance your search engine marketing efforts and help position your website for success online. If you haven’t added a social media component to your search marketing strategy, you’re already behind the eight ball, at least  as far as establishing trust and authority. With confirmation from the search engines that social matters in more ways than one for your site’s online performance, the need for a tailor-made social campaign is just that much more urgent.

For information on how to turbo-boost your search engine marketing strategy with a cutting-edge social strategy, call us on 1300 88 55 57.