Social Signals: How They Improve SEO Rankings?

Social Signals: How They Improve SEO Rankings?
Social Signals: How They Improve SEO Rankings?

Social signals are a means to measure the strength of your social media presence. It allows you to measure and analyze your brand’s popularity or impact on social media platforms such as Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, etc.

Like or Dislikes: Everything Matters

Whether you share a plain-text tweet or a colorful Instagram post, their value is only measurable if they entice user action i.e compel them to either like dislike, share, or comment. A responsible digital marketer must concentrate to get the most user-interactions to your posts. It is better for your brand image and popularity. (Even negative publicity works sometimes, but be careful when you seek one)

But the big question is how do they improve rankings?

Although social signals are not part of Google’s ranking factor list yet, we can all agree to the fact Google or other search engines never disclose all the ranking factors. And, if common sense prevails, we can clearly see that social signals do impact online brand perception. So, including Social signals in your organic SEO tactics is always a wise thing to do. 

Influence Of Social Signals On Ranking

There are many ways in which social media or social signals can affect the way your websites rank. Let’s discuss how the ranking of your website is affected by social signals.

  • Social Media Posts Are Indexed

Facebook and other popular platforms allow search engines to index some of the content. This means that Facebook quality social media posts can help you gain some great backlinks and improve your DA. 

Google considers links of your website or your blog on social media to be a backlink. It means that just like any other blog post that ranks on Google, your Facebook post or any other social media post may as well rank. 

When a post goes viral, the ranking of that particular post is increased. Considering the traditional SEO ranking methods, according to which more the backlinks will be the ranking, you can consider your post on social media to be a backlink for your blog. Therefore, it will also increase your domain authority.

Social Media Posts Can Appear on SERPs

For instance, if you have a social media account for your blog, be it Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, it will rank on Google. If you are active on social media and get high engagement on your posts then you are more likely to rank better on the search engine.

  • Social Media is a Search Engine

Gone were the days when Bing or Google used to be the search engine. Nowadays, social platforms like Facebook, Linkedin, Quora, and Medium, have turned up to resolve the queries of the users. 

Instead of relying solely on search engines, users now use different social platforms for their content needs. For instance, Quora is now a widely popular platform for informational search queries. 

  • Social Media Drives Website Traffic

Last but not least, as a website owner you need to engage with your audience at places where they are most likely to be found on the internet. As per recent studies, the average time spent on social media was 3 hours in 2020. It is believed that over 3 billion people will use social media in 2021.  As a website owner, you can’t simply ignore the potential of social media for increasing your website traffic and customers. 

How To Increase Social Signals?

Google as of now doesn’t focus too much on ranking social signals, but that doesn’t mean it never will. However, Bing does play a huge role when it comes to ranking based on social signals. Don’t forget, it isn’t only Google that you have to rank on, but other search engines like DuckDuckGo and Bing as well. Here are a few steps that can help you increase social signals.

  • You should post daily. Posting something on social media will keep you on top of your social media news feed. Plus, it creates consistency and credibility among your audience.  
  • 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual. SO make your posts more visually appealing. Images and videos boost engagement, improves user experience, and make your message 3X times more effective.
  • Be active and interact with people on social media. You should watch out for comments on your page or post. If you get any negative comments, you can work on solving the problem of people.  
  • Do not expect immediate results. Remember social media is noisy and it takes time to build credibility and following. Monitor your engagement and keep improving even if the initial response is below your expectations. 
  • Sometimes, people won’t react to your post and will leave it unseen. You should keep track of what posts of yours receive most like or most dislike. This will help you know what your audience likes, and you will be able to determine what to post next. 
  • Learn from your competitors or hire an expert who can guide you to navigate the social landscape better. Note that you will not all the time receive only likes and positive comments. 
  • Have giveaways or contests on your page. People look out for giveaways, if they know that you have frequent contests, then they will most likely engage on your page. 
  • Do partnership with other brands, or best if you use some influencers who command a strong fanbase in your domain. This will help you generate good momentum as well as some much-needed headstart. 
  • Try to be on all the social media platforms. Your visitor may be on Facebook and not on Twitter and Instagram. If you are available on all the social media platforms, it will be easier for your viewers to follow you. 

Final Words

As technology evolves so do people. Gone are the days when SEO was all you needed to do for grabbing the attention of your target audience. Today, the digital landscape is extremely competitive and you must have a comprehensive plan to outpace and outrank your competition. 

Social signals play a significant role in your online reputation. With a comprehensive social media plan, you can not only increase awareness about your brand but also boost website traffic for increased revenue and sales.