Does Social Media Help in Your SEO?

How will building a strong social profile help you and your business be found on Google?

These types of questions are asked by plenty, so we thought why not help you find the answer.

Did you know that a social profile gives your site a “nofollow” link?

Nofollow links do not give you the link juice, or help with SEO, when you post new status on Facebook wall, or when you tweet a new message on Twitter, pin a post on Pinterest, upload a video on YouTube, and so on.

So how will social media help in your SEO?

Well, social media can help in your SEO when you optimize social profile pages like “about us” with keywords you want to target. Crafting “SEO-ed” post and pages on social profiles will help it seem more relevant to people searching for it, and hence, rank you better in search engines. However, if you simply want to rank higher with backlinks from social media sites, you will not get much help there.

This is why you need to understand what Matt Cutts, the head of anti-spam department on Google, has to say.

“SEO isn’t everything for ranking higher in the search engines. For a while, forget about SEO, and instead focus on users,” advises Matt. “Focus on users who use their social profiles to search for information that you publish. Those people, who will recommend your content to others, and who in turn, will recommend to others,” shares Matt.

Instead of focusing only the SEO, you’ll have to put some efforts to generate helpful and useful tips, tricks, and honest reviews about product and services for people who will spread the message, and if they like it, they’ll share it with their social circles, connections, and friends.

So you see, if you can tap into this market, they’ll help your business grow as well as rank better in search engines. By driving them to your site, by making them “Like,” your content, or even “Share” them with their connections, they’re actually sending social signals to Google saying that this person/site is trustworthy, provides informative and useful content, and we trust what he/she has to say.

No wonder why major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing have started to give more priority to authority figures and brands.

What actions should you take in order to allow social media to help in your SEO?

1. Make your profiles relevant, informative, and interesting. (Use keywords naturally and avoid “keyword stuffing.”)

2. Do insert links back to your site/blog so that people can actually visit your site if they’re interested to learn more.

3. Use social blog to build deep and lasting relationships and drive them to your blog/site.

4. Make sure to add social share icons on your website page/post(s) so that people have an option to share, or like, them if they really appreciate you effort.

5. Focus your energy to become an industry-expert by creating informative as well as interesting content so that your readers have a reason to leave their social profile and visit your blog/site.

6. Enjoy what you’re doing and you’ll never have to work for the rest of your life. If you love what you do, you won’t mind working long hours on your business, do you?

Over to you! What are the ways social media help in your SEO? Please comment below.