What the heck does social media have to have to do with SEO? At MWI, we get many of these inquiries from current and prospective clients. While social media has been an increasingly popular channel for marketing over the last few years, many companies haven't yet begun to make use of the potential of it. This is crucial if you are investing in SEO. Setting up and managing social media accounts are essential to aid in SEO efforts, although the benefits may not be immediately obvious. Below are five reasons why social media is important for SEO.

1.) Social Media Signals
It is no secret that Google, Bing, and other search engines make use of online conversations as part of their algorithm for ranking. Whenever people tweet, like or comment on the content they like This is referred to as social engagement. Content that has the highest number of social engagements will be able to show more social signals. Search engines analyze these signals from social media, and use it as a quality factor when ranking content. It's a way of evaluating the quality of content that people are able to use in comparison to what their algorithm determines to be of good quality. If something has a high amount of social interaction It can be quickly identified.

2) Link Building
It is long past the time when you could make a request for links from other websites. Google's Panda/Penguin algorithms have compelled SEOs to build links in the traditional way: create quality content that is relevant. How do you reach out to websites that are willing to link to your site, if the request is considered "unnatural"? Social media is the answer. Social media allows you to post your content and share it with relevant audiences who may be willing to link to your content, Byftools.com/mw/index.php/User:NickiWight2 should it be worth linking to. These people will promote your content to others and boost your authority.

3.) Content Amplification
You can make all the high quality content you want however, it will not get much traction without amplification. Marketing via email can be great method to boost content but it's only going to reach those in your list of marketing contacts. It is possible to reach new audiences through social media. If you send your content out to your followers, they'll also share it with their personal followings if they find it helpful. They will then also share it with their friends to increase your reach. You will also gain relevant traffic and inbound links, social signals, and brand awareness, all of which can be utilized by search engines to determine content to determine the quality of your content.

content amplification lifecycle

4.) Brand Recognition and Signals
Search engines use brand image and recognition to judge the quality of your site and how trustworthy it should be in their ranking algorithms. Aside from amplifying your content social media can also help increase brand recognition. Google calls this co-citation. Making these co-citations with social media can help increase Google's trust in your website as well as helping by using branded search terms.

5.) Social Indexing
Search engines have been indexing social media profiles for some time now which means that they appear in search result pages. This enables your brand to show up in search results for branded search queries on more than just your own website. But it gets even better than that. Individual tweets from Twitter were once indexed and were displayed in the search results. This allowed your website to rank higher on search. This was just temporary for a few months before Google decided to discontinue this feature, which is still in effect. Google will once again show tweets in search results, so it's important to leverage it for getting your content ranked.