How do social signals affect SEO?

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The thing about social signals and SEO is that there is a correlation between social audience engagement and rankings, because the more Likes, Retweets and Pins your posts get, the more likely you are to drive traffic to your website and as that happens, the more positive signals you send to search engines regarding the quality and relevance of your content.

And ultimately, social signals may not be a commercial property owners database determining factor for ranking on Google, but Social Media is designed to move masses, masses that by the way can leave hundreds or thousands of reactions registered on the network, a network that in turn is being evaluated and tracked by Google to determine how relevant a website is.

So, it’s true that, at least for now, we don’t know exactly what role social signals play in Google rankings and the impact on SEO. However, it’s also true that if you manage to generate buzz from your social platforms, you could score points for SEO.

On the other hand, Bing has already stated that it is important for it to rank and as for Google, we can recap:

In the second video shared at the beginning of this post, Matt Cutts claims that social signals from Twitter and Facebook are considered for ranking. Then, in 2014, he makes another video to flatly deny that he considers social signals for ranking. Contradictory, right?

What happened during this time is that Twitter temporarily blocked access to the crawlers, so Google changed its position again, indicating that it cannot give a value or pagerank to a site that it cannot access. For this reason, it stopped valuing the social signals of the platforms that were the most positioned at that time: Facebook and Twitter. After this incident, something even more interesting happened: Google and Twitter formed an alliance.

How can you leverage merging for SEO?
Before answering the question, let's put it in context:

Twitter once had the upper hand over a fairly solid user base. Over time, this number has declined. In 2013, 46% of users went to Twitter daily; a year later, that number had dropped to 36%.

And now it only has 19% of the market share. Not bad, but compared to Facebook, these are not the best numbers.

On the other hand, Twitter's qualities today have made it an important channel for keeping up to date with current news; real-time information is its greatest virtue.

Google, for its part, gives us another lesson on how to work towards user satisfaction.

This alliance creates a win-win relationship: the Twitter domain is displayed in search results and the more visitors and users are active within the platform, the more advertising revenue comes in for the blue bird and therefore, more authority for the platform.

Google, for its part, provides its users with current information.

How to take advantage of the alliance between Twitter and Google?
The most obvious and immediate recommendation is to use Twitter ! Consider using it as an important part of your Social Media strategy, because it is already more than clear that it has a very special place in the eyes of Google.

The other recommendation is that no matter what happens, consider including the hashtag for a simple reason: words consisting of # are keywords that the user will use at any time to search on Google. Let's see it with an example:

Just at the time I was writing this post, there was a news story that was trending on Twitter, more specifically in Mexico: the death of Argentine singer-songwriter Alberto Cortez. Searching on Google, I see these results:

In addition to showing the Twitter domain as seen in the first screenshot, the most relevant domains are shown, those that, according to Google's criteria, should appear in the search results. But there is more: when I look at the Twitter account of El Sol de México, I notice that its list of followers exceeds 60 thousand.

Chance or causality?

Apparently, the correlation I was talking about earlier, with the number of followers, the engagement of those followers, and the traffic that number of followers can bring to your website, can definitely affect your ranking in the rankings and in the results.

So, to finish this point, you have to work on a social media strategy that includes active participation on Twitter, and at the same time respects all of Google's guidelines for positioning, you know, no Fake News, poor quality backlinks , among other things.

What can be done to improve social signals on other networks?
First of all, you need to start working on a social media strategy right away. As I have already mentioned, as you well know, social media has always been a very important channel for gaining reputation and visibility within the online environment.

So, I would initially tell you to focus on the two ways of influencing rankings with social signals, those that work directly:

Number of people who like your brand on Facebook, as well as the remaining actions – you know, comments, shares, etc.

Number of followers on Twitter, and just like Facebook, the level of engagement on this platform, especially the number of tweets that mention your brand.
And so it is with the rest of the social networks, except Google+, because it is already out of the game.

It is important that you pay special attention to all the actions that will allow you to leave social signals on the network, because it is evident that they are becoming an essential factor in impacting rankings and classifications.

Also, consider that the world is becoming more social, our generation spends more time on social media than on search engines. And even you are aware that a person is more likely to trust a brand when it is on social platforms sharing and being accessible to everyone.

Not to mention that websites that have a strong presence on social media tend to have a more loyal community, so it could become a plus to get more conversions with a lower CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost).

On the other hand, you have to be alert to the signals that work indirectly in relation to social signals:

How many inbound links? The more quality links, the better.
Online reviews should also be taken into account. These signals are also taken into account by Google.
Are you a restaurant? Watch out for this. Bounce rate, visit time and frequency of visits.
The conclusion is logical, and that is that Social Networks can become a very important channel to generate traffic, and the more followers there are, the more visits there may be, and that is a very clear signal for Google.

As for online reviews, whether you use Yelp, Google, or simply social media customer service, positive interaction on these channels with users or customers will give you even more exposure, and the more exposure, the more likely you are to attract more audiences. It's like a chain effect.

Regarding bounce rate and visit time, the more followers you have frequently visiting the website with a long visit time, the more positive signals you give to Google.

Finally, consider that we are facing a generation that is becoming more social than ever. Many statistics confirm this and you are probably already aware of it.

In fact, so much so that Matt Cutts himself has stated that he has no doubt that in 10 years, everything will become more social.

If you want to use social signals to positively impact your SEO strategy, become socially active. Work hard to get your community to end up landing on your website. There is no better signal than that!