What are the links between social networks and SEO?

If you follow web marketing blogs, you’ve noticed that the trend is clearly geared towards content

marketing. High-quality, high-value content appeals to Google, but what about your social media activities related to this strategy and why have you invested so much in your social media presence in recent years?
What links can be made between these two parameters?

Chances are your company has led this debate internally, do you have any answers?

Social media content makes life easier for your blog.

Boucar Diouf*

SEO optimization budgets are now a reality in the business world related to the Internet and these discussions are far from over.

Google and other search engines refine their algorithms and make them evolve according to the searches of Internet users, this requires digital marketing to constantly adjust its approaches in order to maintain and grow the positions of their customers’ portals in the organic results.

The truth — at least for now — is that great content, SEO and social media are inextricably linked.

Boucar Diouf’s grandfather said:

if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it really make noise when it falls (La nature selon Boucar on Radio-Canada 2016)

This includes onpage optimization (on each item) and relevant linking, both internally and externally.

So, is being active on social media beneficial for SEO?

If your social media presence is influential, the answer is yes. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are springboards for content promotion.

There are many examples on the web and I have many clients who are proof of it: the distribution of content on social networks is a proven strategy that gives the opportunity to stand out in the less and less virtual world that is the Web.

It should be noted that this article only considers informational content and that this excludes Buzz based on

• provocation,
• the controversy,
• Easy images (photos of kittens and star nipples that overflow)
• etc

The Trio: Content/SEO/Social Media

• How do they interfere?
• What are their direct and indirect links?

Let’s take a look, and start with the relationship between social signals and SERP rankings.

Do social signals impact SEO?

Google has been clear for a long time: shares, “likes” and other “Pluses” are not taken into consideration in the search algorithm.

Matt Cutts already repeated it in 2012 in his columns:

About the number of followers on Twitter, or Facebook, to the best of my knowledge, there are currently no such signals in Google’s algorithm.

While social signals could be a great indicator of quality for Google, it’s access to these metrics that remains a major obstacle. Google would first need direct access to the various social networking sites and at the moment, only Twitter has an agreement that goes in this direction with the web search giant.

When Search Engine Land announced last year that Twitter would give Google access to tweets in real time, some SEOs began tracking their location by correlating them with their activity on the “tweeter,” eager to identify a direct link.

The findings seem to show that sites with strong social signals had progressed in the SERP.

However, I am not aware of a serious and well-documented study on a large scale that would support this claim.

Does this mean that social activity is irrelevant in terms of strict position gains?

While we can’t really prove a direct link between cause and effect, we do know that there is a strong correlation.

Correlation finding

According to the “Searchmetrics Report Ranking Factors” report in 2015, there are strong correlations between high positions in the SERP and social signals on Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Pinterest. While the paper did not consider other social networking sites to be less “big,” it is very likely that these conclusions would be realistic.

Various SEO experts remain convinced of this without always being able to demonstrate it clearly

The report states that the top-ranked pages showed significantly more activity on Facebook. In fact, Top 1 pages have twice as much “Facebook social” as those ranked second.

The report also found similar correlations for the top 10 sites.

But how can we explain the fact that we seriously consider this correlation while Google denies it?

The indirect impact of social visits on ranking.

When we talk about social signals, we look at several types of interactions in the equation: induced traffic to pages, likes, more, tweets, retweets, re-pins, votes , reviews… and any clicks that potentially increase the visibility of a page or visits to a domain.

When a link is shared on social media, the reach and visibility of that URL climbs to the point where it becomes a buzz.

Every time a URL is shared, the article gains visibility. For example, if 50 people see a link in their Facebook “Wall” feed, 5 of them may click to actually see the page. If a URL is shared 1000 times, the visibility of that URL increases proportionally.

This increased visibility has a number of indirect outcomes.

First, as a link is shared, repinned, retweeted, etc. the page receives more traffic resulting in more shares… resulting in more visits. As sharing passes from one network to another and multiplies accordingly, the number of visits to the site sends a signal of popularity on the web that can only please the algorithm.

This directly impacts both the URL rankings and the index, the domain authority… And if visits from social networks are not important, why are they so clearly identified in analytics ?

This is why “social actions” are sometimes called “links” even though from an SEO point of view no hyperlinks are considered.

Content: The foundation of SEO

Need we remind you that content is the very foundation of SEO?

We have seen that SEO (and positions) and the mechanics of social media are linked by the visibility induced.

But how does content fit into this equation?

Without quality content, there is no user engagement, no “tribe”, no friends or influence on social media.

To stand out, an article must meet a few criteria

• Providing quality information
• Be relevant to the target audience so that people share and engage
• Be optimized from a technical SEO point of view so that Google can, for its part, index it and correctly identify the main theme of the page.
• Provide a user experience that makes it easy to share (social media buttons, likes, etc.)

Do you have a global approach?

An integrated and holistic approach is now the key to generating traffic, increasing results and growing your business on the Internet.

1. Consider what your audience wants to learn (this involves topics to select, key phrases to push).
2. Optimize your texts, both Onpage and UX (user experience).
3. Promote this content via social media to your target audience, it’s the last step in the cycle.

*Image: Boucar Diouf a priori, royalty-free: @babelio.com/auteur/Diouf-Boucar/67818/photos