Today, you can no longer separate search engine optimization (SEO) with social media marketing (SMM) since they are interrelated. So much so, you can use SEO to boost SMM and vice versa. In fact, some companies are even offering social SEO, bundling SEO, and SMM in one service package.
Social signals as part of the ranking factors
Although Google won’t publish the list of the ranking factors it uses, it hinted its use of social signals time and again as one of these factors. However, talking about organic social signals, such as the volume of subscribers or followers, likes, shares, and comments, it says something important: The higher the engagement on a particular page, the higher its ranking on results pages. Webs Unweaved and other experts say that this is why web designers and SEO providers need to integrate social widgets on the site of their clients.
Social shares as the new link building
Speaking of engagement, social shares are considered as a non-manipulative way to earn back-links. Back-links are still important to SEO, and this can be acquired naturally through tweets, Facebook posts, and +1s. It’s the link juice created by spreading content on these social platforms that the website should be after. Links is something you should earn because Google penalizes those who are buying links from link farms.
Social channel for content discovery
Discovering and consuming great content happen on social platforms. Yes, there’s a reason for content to go viral. People love awesomely inspiring content since they are compelled to share such contents publicly. For SEO purposes, this is one way to optimize for keywords and key phrases that are organically integrated into the content they want to publish.
Evidently, the growing interdependence between SEO and SMM is undeniable. Remember, people are on social media, and some of these people are your actual target audience. For businesses, it means it’s either you embrace it or you lag behind the competition because your rivals are doing it and you are not.
