There is a common misconception among people that Social media links don’t help SEO. People often fail to comprehend the indirect influence of social media links on the overall SEO strategy and therefore shun its importance altogether. Coupled with a fact that social media links are no-follow links adds to the reluctance of people to maintain an active link profile on social channels.
Yeah it is true that Social media links don’t directly influence traditional SEO factors, but they do indirectly help your SEO performance by boosting visibility, driving traffic, strengthening the brand’s reputation and also help build more links. Hence, the use of social media along with your digital marketing strategy has the potential to increase your website’s position in search results.
Here are a few ways in which social media helps your overall SEO strategy:
Increased visibility and traffic: Social media is used to share content which helps attract more website visitors. This surge in the traffic due to social media sharing indirectly boosts SEO by indicating the content’s relevance and quality to the search engines.
Brand awareness and reputation: Social media intuitively helps to increase brand awareness and trust, this in turn will result in more clicks on search engine result pages and boost your SEO.
Social signals: Social media likes, shares, etc. aren’t officially workplace SEO elements, but they can stir up interest for your website, drive traffic, and maintain longer engagement. Your SEO ranking might just get a gentle, positive push.
Link building and referral traffic: Social media links may not be everyone’s idea of gold standard backlinks, but they can indeed garner attention and ultimately result in good backlinks from other sites.
Social media profiles in search results: Another key benefit of social media is that your profiles can show up in search results as your brand, giving you more exposure so that it’s easier for users to discover you.
The bottom line is that social media links themselves may not directly influence SEO ranking factors, but they are a powerful tool to boost your website’s visibility and credibility.