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Social signals denote the engagement your content accumulates on social media platforms, such as likes, comments, or shares. These signals serve as an effective measure of your content’s visibility and engagement on social media, indicating the success of your content distribution strategy.
Those immersed in SEO or with some research might have stumbled upon assertions that social signals directly influence SEO rankings. Contrary to these assertions, Google representatives have repeatedly stated that social signals do not directly impact SEO rankings.
However, even if Google’s ranking algorithms do not directly consider social signals, optimizing your social media content distribution can significantly enhance your SEO efforts. Many businesses can substantially boost their SEO by investing more effort into their social media content distribution. Continue reading to understand better and learn ways to enhance your social signals to aid your SEO.
Social Signals and Their Non-impact on SEO Rankings
It’s crucial to understand why social signals aren’t a ranking factor. A representative claim comes from John Mueller, Google’s search advocate.
Despite being an older video, this statement is one of the most clear-cut views on social signals and SEO directly from Google’s representatives. There have been numerous similar claims since.
Here’s an analysis of why it’s plausible that social signals do not directly impact ranking factors.
Primarily, social media platforms are rife with spam and fake accounts. With the possibility of purchasing an infinite amount of followers and likes for a minimal cost, distinguishing authentic social signals from fraudulent ones can be challenging for Google, especially when social media platforms struggle to eliminate all spam.
The role of social media algorithms is another factor. High-quality content often needs to be noticed with minimal visibility, while low-quality content gains traction. If you manage a significant account or promote your social media posts, the advantage you gain has little to do with the quality of the content itself.
Moreover, content that garners popularity on social media isn’t necessarily designed to rank in search and vice versa. Can you imagine a “necessary yet unexciting” article gaining heaps of likes, shares, and comments?
The chances are slim. As an author, I struggle to share this in a way that motivates people to engage. If that’s my perspective, others are likely even less inclined to share.
However, the article targets keywords with robust search demand and ranks for them. It delivers what people searching for that content want to learn about.
Conversely, one of my most engaging tweets was about bounce rate, with a link to the article at the end of the thread.
The first tweet from this thread generated strong social signals, and even the last one containing the post link did fairly well.
However, the article has yet to achieve a high ranking on Google.
Remember, even if numerous other examples could be found, they wouldn’t necessarily prove causality because we’re only considering one variable. Both search engine and social media ranking algorithms involve hundreds, if not thousands, of variables.
The crux is minimal overlap in the factors that make content popular on social media and in search engines, so aligning their rankings would make little sense.
How Robust Social Signals Can Enhance Your SEO
Content distribution often proves to be the weak link for many marketing teams. Post-publishing efforts often need to be revised despite investing considerable time in creating quality content.
Social media (both organic and paid) plays a critical role in your content distribution strategy. Here’s why enhancing your social signals can boost your SEO.
Social Media: An Integral Component of Your SEO and Content Marketing Flywheel
Rand Fishkin introduced the concept of the “marketing flywheel” to describe a series of continuous and reciprocal marketing efforts that reinforce each other, making a more significant impact with less effort over time.
This can also be interpreted as a snowball effect in the context of marketing tactics.
Content distribution takes up the entire left side of the diagram. Social media is an important part of that, and strong social signals signify success in this area.
But, if you remove social media from the flywheel, you’ll encounter significantly more resistance.
Becoming a Niche Authority: Social Signals as an Indicator
Part of the flywheel model emphasizes: “Increasing your authority to rank better in search engines.”
Although this is a simplified viewpoint, and authority is just one of many variables implicated in ranking, it’s undoubtedly an aspect that has gained importance over the years.
Authoritativeness is one of the pillars in Google’s E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) concept used to evaluate and adjust Google’s search ranking systems.
Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines reference social media several times. It makes sense that Google would need to consider this in assessing individuals’ and brands’ E-A-T.
One of the most reputable experts in this field, Marie Haynes, provides a valuable perspective on this:
Consider the social media accounts you follow for learning. They likely demonstrate many, if not all, of the E-A-T components. This is the goal for your brand on social media (and elsewhere).
By doing so, you benefit from compounded social signals and frequent recognition as a go-to resource. This effect translates into automatically receiving links to all our new content pieces. We can confidently claim to be such an authority in the SEO industry.
This particular example saw most of the initial traffic thanks to the author, Patrick Stox, sharing it on his Twitter.
Patrick, being one of the top authorities in SEO, and his hot take sparking discussions, certainly helped. But we’re observing similar effects on initial backlink acquisition consistently.
Of course, sometimes the links are mostly worthless, as they often come from content aggregators and spam websites. But we also frequently see our content showcased in industry news, as evidenced above with one of our recent pieces.
Strong Correlation with Google Discover Traffic
Google Discover is an auto-generated, highly personalized mobile feed based on your online activity. It presents information and news about topics that interest you, such as SEO, photography, or traveling.
While many people may need to be made aware of this feed on their mobile devices, some businesses generate most of their organic traffic through this feed (like news and content-heavy websites).
Even a B2B SaaS blog like ours can garner a significant portion of traffic from it.
Google Discover is mostly a black box that’s challenging to optimize for. However, one of the variables with a strong correlation to Discover performance is the buzz created by your content distribution.
Google promotes content that becomes popular on social media to the top of its Discover feed. Strong social signals could potentially translate into substantial Google Discover performance.
See also: Google Recommendations: Multiple Date Signals On Webpages.
Five Essential Strategies to Harmonize Your SEO and Social Media Initiatives
The synergistic relationship between SEO and social media is important for maximizing the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts.
While there is an abundance of material out there to learn about content distribution and social media marketing, we’ll focus on several pivotal tactics that can aid in unifying your SEO and social media activities:
1. Connect your website and social media profiles.
Building your brand’s presence and authority on social media can boost your SEO. Google can reconcile signals from authors and brands across various platforms, including social media.
Schema markup is a coding system that helps search engines better comprehend and present your content in search results. You should interlink your website and social media profiles to facilitate Google’s process. Employing the same schema markup can strengthen this connection in Google’s perception.
You should also ensure consistency in how your company and products are described across different platforms. This is crucial in establishing your entity in Google’s Knowledge Graph.
Interlinking and consistency can lead to another SEO advantage: dominating more search results on branded SERPs.
2. Incorporate link-bait content in your content strategy.
Link bait content is designed to attract backlinks and tends to generate social media buzz. The most linked-to pages on a blog are usually also the most shared on social media.
Producing this type of content is challenging, but its benefits across all platforms make it worth the effort. To make this content successful, you need to distribute it appropriately, especially if it doesn’t target any specific keyword and is purely created for attracting links and generating buzz.
3. Engage with individuals whose content you reference.
Creating top-notch content often requires referencing other authoritative and relevant sources. This practice not only contributes to E-A-T signals but can also lead to beneficial interactions. For example, you can ask those you link to help with content distribution.
Also, consider using the tactic known as ego-baiting, which involves citing resources from others who aren’t aware of it when you’re writing and publishing.
4. Repurpose your content for other channels and mediums.
Different communication mediums require different types of content. What works well on one platform may be less effective or even possible on another.
However, you can make things easier by repurposing your existing content for different platforms. Even if you don’t link out, you still enhance your brand and E-A-T.
The key here is to make use of what you already have and repurpose it across multiple platforms in various formats. Through trial and error, you’ll learn what works best.
5. Delegate social media tasks to experts (and maintain good relationships with them)
Most SEOs or marketers aren’t social media specialists. To ensure the best results, consider hiring a consultant or a social media specialist to guide your strategies in the right direction.
If you already have a team or outsource to an agency, ensure they are part of the conversation. SEO is a multidisciplinary field, and the collaboration of other channels and departments is necessary to maximize its benefits.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, keep your content distribution consistent. It’s perfectly acceptable to repeatedly share the same or similar content on social media within a reasonable timeframe. Many companies need to maintain this consistency when they release new content.
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