Social Signals and Search Engine Optimization: Integrating Social Media and SEO
Social media and search engine optimization have always been entwined. In recent years search engines have moved more towards using "social signals" for their search rankings, though there still is a separation between the two marketing tactics. Integrating social media and SEO requires an understanding of how one impacts the other.
Social Media Search Results
Social media integrates with SEO in one very direct way: social media content shows up on search engines. Social sites such as Twitter and YouTube are featured directly on search engines such as Google and Bing; thus, highly accessible social content is also highly search optimized content. To feature highly on search engines, companies can focus on building their social media campaigns. As an additional bonus to this, company profiles and individual profiles will also rank highly on search engine results for that particular company or person. This can be used to significant effect as long as the traffic is appropriately funneled.
Informational Profiles
Search engines today attempt to answer questions in addition to simply returning results. If a user searches for "A to Z Company," a search engine won't just return results related to A to Z Company -- it will also give a biography of that company, including information about how long it's been in business and where it is based. As long as a business maintains their information with the search engine, they can then direct users to their own websites and social media accounts through that biographical information.
Social Authority
Some search engines -- though not all of them -- track what is known as "social authority." If an individual has many followers throughout the Internet, pages that are authored by them will become more important and more visible. Though some search engines have dropped authority as a metric, others still follow it. Thus, social authority can help a company's search engine optimization on one search engine but not another. Regardless, social authority cannot hurt a person's search engine standing.
There are additionally ways in which social media and SEO are entirely separate. For instance, social links -- links shared in social sites -- do not advance a site's SEO. Denver SEO services will often concentrate on social media and SEO separately, while still coordinating campaigns together. As time goes on, however, social media and SEO are becoming more inherently linked.