What do social media platforms provide in terms of SEO? At MWI we hear these questions frequently from our potential and current clients. Social media is a rapidly expanding marketing channel that many companies have only just begun taking advantage of in the last few years, however it's vital to take advantage of it in particular if you're putting efforts in search engine optimization. Setting up and managing social media accounts are crucial to support SEO efforts, although the benefits may not be immediately obvious. Out of the numerous reasons you should think about the use of social media in your online strategy, here are 5 reasons why it's crucial for SEO.

1.) Social Media Signals
It's not difficult to see that Google, Bing, and other search engines make use of online conversations as part of their algorithm for ranking. When people share content via Twitter, Facebook, comment or share an article that is known as a social engagement. A piece of content that has more engagements on social media will be able to show more social signals. Search engines evaluate these social signals and consider it an indicator of quality when ranking the content. This is a method for search engines to determine what people find most useful and also what they consider to be top-quality. The content you've created can be immediately indexed in the event that it's receiving lots of social engagement.

2) Link Building
It's past the period when you could just get links from other websites. Google's Panda/Penguin algorithm has forced SEOs to link build using the old method: make quality content that is relevant. But how do you reach websites willing to link to your content , if they are not directly approached as an "unnatural" link building practice? Social media is the solution. Social media allows you to expose your content to relevant audiences who may be willing to share it with others, should it be worth linking to. They will also promote your content to others and boost your authority.

3.) The amplifying of content
It doesn't matter how high-quality the content you publish, it will not be popular without amplification. Email marketing is a great way of amplifying content but it will only reach those in your list of marketing contacts. It is possible to reach new audiences via social media. If you publish your content to your followers, they will also share it with their personal followings when they find it useful. These people will then also share it with their friends, further increasing your reach. In return, you gain many relevant visitors, inbound links, branding awareness and social signals All of which are utilized by search engines to assess the quality of your content.

content amplification lifecycle

4) Brand Awareness and Signals
Brand recognition and brand identity can tell search engines an awful lot about the overall quality of your site's content and how much it should be believed to be in its ranking algorithms. Social media aids in building brand awareness and amplifies your content. Google calls this co-citation. Building these co-citations through social media can help increase the trust Google has in your site, as well as aiding with search queries that are personalized.

5) Social Indexing
Search engines have been indexing social media sites since a while so they can now show up in search result pages. This allows your company to be displayed in search results for branded search queries , which is more than only your website. However, it's even more than that. Individual Tweets from Twitter were at one time indexed and displayed in search results as well which gave another means for your content to rank in the search results. It was temporary, however the deal was ended when Google removed it after couple of months. Google will once again show tweets in search results, so it's important to leverage it for زيادة مشاهدات اليوتيوب getting your content ranked.