Does using social media help to improve the ranking of your website in search engines?

When used effectively, the social media space can be leveraged to gain visibility among your target audience.  Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn are now an integral part of every serious marketing plan. Marketers know that it’s impossible to grow businesses nowadays without a presence on social media, but does using social media really help to improve the rankings of your website in search engines?

Search engines now report on social media content when ranking sites across the web. While there are other factors that are taken into account when indexing web content, increasing attention is being paid to social media. So using social media does help to improve your website ranking… but how

Build links and more links...

Attracting quality links should be a big part of your social media strategy. Sites with strong links have always been attractive to search engines, and social media can help you build strong links. If you have valuable content that users find informative and relevant, you can gain impressive inbound links, when the content is shared across social media. Likes, shares, tweets, and retweets … these are all going to increase your ranking.

Social Shares tell the story...

As far as search engines are concerned, when you have a high number of social shares this is a strong indicator that you are authentic and relevant. Therefore sites that have a network of quality followers and connections are considered reputable sites or brands, worthy of a high search engine ranking.

The bottom line is, social media is important to the ranking of your website. You don’t need to be on every social media platform, simply go where your target audience is, and then focus your time and money on building your ‘social reputation’.