Does social media influence SEO?

Does social media influence SEO?

Here at Pumpkin Web Design, we are Preston’s leading web marketing and web design experts. And we work across the North West region, from Manchester to Southport, to deliver high quality, effective solutions to businesses and clients. This includes Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and social media. But does social media influence SEO? And how can you use social media to get the most value for your company? Well, this is our guide exploring the complex answer to the question, how does social media influence SEO?

Social media for your company

Social media is something we’re all using personally. But could you put it to good use for your company? Well, the simple answer is yes. There are an incredible number of advantages of using social media for business purposes. And these include:

  • increasing your potential customer base- social media allows you to reach a large amount of people, all at the same time. And this can help generate more interest in your products or services, or your company as a whole
  • sales and conversions- with a larger client base, you can expect to increase your sales and conversions simply from more opportunity

So while social media as a tool by itself can be more than helpful, does it have an impact on your websites Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)? And if so, what is this impact likely to be?

Does social media influence SEO?

Does social media influence SEO?

Social media does not directly influence your SEO efforts. This is for two reasons.

Firstly, the links from social media, barely make a difference to the ranking algorithms, if at all. After all, if a link is a vote for your company, your social media is sort of like you sitting there, repeatedly voting for yourself. Only one vote counts. And that barely matters. For the most cases, the links on social media are specified as a nofollow anyway. So there really isn’t much link juice there!

Additionally, social mentions and improving awareness of your brand on social media are essential for business. But not helpful for SEO at all. They have little to no effect. This is because of the authority section of the ranking algorithm. Essentially social mentions and shares on social media have no authority at all, because Google cannot tell who the true owner of the social media account it. This means that endorsements from big stars won’t help your SEO. Although they will still improve sales.

So, can social media be used to influence SEO?

Just because social media doesn’t directly influence SEO, doesn’t mean that it can’t have an indirect impact. This can take many forms, including:

  • Getting your content found by interested third parties. Third parties can pick up your article and link to it in their blogs and content. Which will give you one of the most rare and valuable things in SEO: an organic link. Without social media, or a pre-agreed partnership, these are incredibly difficult to secure.
  • Increase the lifespan of your content- so unless people are actually reading your blog, and clicking back through ten pages to find your older content, this content is essentially dead. Search engines are the only way for this older content to get found, and this is an incredibly competitive field. Social media however, offers you the chance to release content whenever you like. And you can even release the same content, after a suitable amount of time. This means that your content will go further, and last longer. With more traffic for older posts, this will also help to improve your SEO, by showing that your content is authoritative, and worth reading.

For more information or advice about social media and SEO, get in touch with the experts today, here at Pumpkin Web Design.

Why not join us on instagram to see what we really get up to...

Pumpkin Web Design Ltd is a small and highly results driven digital agency working for like minded clients in Preston, Chorley, Southport, Blackburn, Burnley, Morecambe,Wigan, Manchester, London, Warrington, Blackpool, Lancaster, Leyland, Lytham St Annes, Bolton, Chester and the UK. Our services include web design, SEO, content marketing, video production, brand design and much more.