How Social Signals Affect SEO: Strategies for Improving SEO – Shopify
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Social signals are engagement metrics like likes, shares, and comments, and they can all indirectly boost organic traffic to your website.
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Many online marketers share a common goal: Optimize their company’s website so it can break through online search algorithms and show up at the top of search results. There are many established ways to do this, but can engagement on your company’s social media profiles help push your website to the top of search results pages, too?
While Google and other leading search engines don’t directly include social media performance in search algorithms, you can use social media to improve your website’s search rankings over the long run. The process starts with improving your social signals.
Here’s an overview of social signals and how they relate to search engine optimization (SEO), with tips for leveraging social media to achieve better search visibility.
Social signals are engagement metrics on social media platforms, including likes, shares, and comments. Social signals can offer insight into your brand’s level of online visibility, influence, and audience engagement. Major social media platforms boast billions of users, and user interaction with your posts can indicate strong brand awareness and customer sentiment.
Search engines like Google and Bing haven’t indicated that user engagement on social media sites impacts search rankings. So should you direct your search engine optimization efforts toward improving your social signals? Kyle Risley, senior SEO lead at Shopify, says no.
“Here’s my advice: I would not try to boost social media engagement as a means to increase your rankings in organic search results,” Kyle says. “There are so many other more meaningful things you could be doing on your site, like improving the quality of the on-page content, targeting the correct keywords, and building links.”
Even if social signals aren’t the main focus of your SEO strategy, Kyle points out that strong social media engagement can eventually pay off in search results rankings.
“Over the long term,” Kyle explains, “Google tends to like sites that are associated with brands. And one of the easiest ways to determine a brand’s popularity is by measuring how frequently users search for that brand. So if you can build a brand through social media and that leads to more people asking search engines for your website, that’s a great popularity signal. That’s worth doing.”
Here’s how social signals can indirectly play into your SEO efforts and, ultimately, your website’s rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs):
“I would not go out and engage in social media marketing for a direct SEO performance payoff,” Kyle says. “But if you can build a brand and an audience via social media, you can probably parlay that into a signal that search engines will take note of via branded query search volume.”
You can launch social media campaigns to amplify high-quality content across multiple platforms and cultivate a loyal audience, which in turn can drive website traffic. Although social media links to your website aren’t a direct ranking factor in search engine results, an increase in traffic to your website signals that you’re publishing valuable, engaging content, and this can help you improve your search engine rankings. When users search for your company directly, it signals to Google that your brand is relevant and authoritative, and your brand might start showing up at the top of search results pages.
Think of it this way: Traffic to your social media profiles isn’t a Google ranking factor (nor is it thought to be a factor for other search engines), but traffic to your own website is a ranking factor. So if you gain organic traffic via your social media pages, you can boost your search visibility.
Social signals contribute to increased brand visibility and awareness. For example, let’s say you run a shoe company with a strong social media presence, and your many Instagram followers see your posts almost daily. The next time one of your followers is online shopping for a new pair of boots, they might recognize your company name in the search results and click on your website.
A social media manager can use social media analytics tools to track social signals in real time. They can then use this data to adjust and optimize their social media strategy to boost user engagement metrics across relevant social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn.
If you use social signals to guide your social media content distribution strategy, your posts stand a better chance of resonating with diverse audiences. Your followers on LinkedIn, for example, might differ significantly from your followers on TikTok, and you can analyze social signals to design posts that drive engagement among these different audiences. With more people engaging with your posts, you increase the likelihood that people will visit your website, which will improve your search engine rankings.
If you run a physical store, you can leverage social signals to improve your local SEO. An engaged social media audience can result in reviews, mentions, and even local news coverage—the types of factors Google considers when formulating search results pages for local users.
If your social media accounts have strong social signals and users comment, like, and reshare your content, it’s more likely to end up in front of influencers, bloggers, and journalists who might link to your site on other websites. These backlinks are one of the most critical factors for SEO, and a linchpin of many digital marketing strategies.
In many cases, strong social signals contribute to a piece of content’s second (or third or fourth) life. As social media users reshare and comment on engaging content across social media platforms, your posts might resurface in people’s feeds, helping you expand your social media visibility. Those users might then search for your company directly, improving your SEO.
By tracking social signals through free tools like Google Analytics or paid social media analytics tools, you can refine your digital marketing strategy and create a comprehensive SEO strategy. For example, let’s say you run an ecommerce dog food company, and you post an informative Instagram Reel about the different types of dog breeds. The video garners many likes, comments, and shares. You decide to continue posting about dog breeds as part of your content marketing strategy, so you publish a native blog post about the subject. When people navigate directly to your website’s blog to view your content, they help improve your website’s search engine ranking.
However, this approach hinges on the idea that the type of content that succeeds in the social media landscape will also succeed in the broader internet landscape. This isn’t a given, particularly since people don’t know exactly why social media algorithms amplify certain pieces of content while seemingly ignoring others.
To improve your social signals and indirectly improve your SEO, you need to master social media engagement. Here are a few ways to improve social signals as part of an overall digital marketing strategy:
Any social media marketing strategy involving social signals and SEO should start with creating quality content. Users are more likely to like, comment on, and share engaging and informative posts, increasing your brand’s visibility. Effective strategies for creating great content include producing blog posts, videos, and infographics that provide information and spark conversation.
User engagement is a key part of a proper content distribution strategy, as social media users are more likely to see interactive posts that receive reshares and comments. So how do you engage users? Try asking questions, creating polls, and encouraging comments. You can also analyze comments and responses (a practice known as social listening) as an informal means of tracking social signals. You’ll get an unvarnished view of what people have to say about your brand.
Each social media platform has a unique audience and algorithm, so it’s essential to optimize your content for different sites. Native content generally performs well because you’ve designed it with a specific platform’s audience in mind, which can help you increase engagement rates. For example, try creating aesthetically driven content for Instagram and crafting business-oriented long-form posts on LinkedIn.
Use visually appealing images and videos to grab your audience’s attention and encourage sharing, and make sure to post relevant content for your target audience. You can also encourage users to take content from your website and share it on their own social media pages, which will expand your reach. To do this, include prominently visible social sharing buttons on your website—one for each of the platforms where you want engagement.
Collaborate with influencers or partner with complementary brands to put your brand in front of new audiences. Seasoned influencers understand social signals matter, and they can help you tap into large, engaged communities, ultimately helping you generate likes, shares, and comments. As more users engage with your content on social media, they might be more likely to visit your website.
Post social media content consistently—at least a few times a week—to encourage a steady stream of user engagement. Consider using a content calendar to help you stay on track. Try tracking social signals with analytics tools to help you identify peak times for engagement.
A like on a Facebook post is an example of a social signal, as is a share on an Instagram post or a comment on a LinkedIn post.
Google has not explicitly stated that social signals are a direct ranking factor in its search algorithm, but social signals can play an indirect role in Google search results.
Even though they are not a direct factor in search engine algorithms, social signals can indirectly influence SEO by driving organic website traffic, cultivating backlinks, and increasing search volume.
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