Does Social Media Affect Google Rankings?

Do your Facebook or Twitter shares have a real impact on how Google ranks your website? For years, Google has said that social media does not affect rankings. Yet, many marketing specialists continue to see an correlation between social signals and higher Google rankings.

Is there a relationship between social media and Google ranking?

Well, it’s a bit complicated since not all is clear cut…

There is no hard evidence to support proof of social engagement as an asset to your company's website ranking. However, no argument excludes this hypothesis either and it seems the "commitment-authority" correlation works quite well in practice.

According to Google, social media is NOT a direct ranking factor.

We remind you what Matt Cutts, former head of the web spam team at Google, said in 2014 about social signals. For him, social signals do not have a direct impact on SEO. Just because a web page is pointed to by thousands of Facebook links it does not mean that it will be well positioned in Google Search.

Correlation does not imply causation. The idea is that you get shares, retweets and likes if and only if your article is great; the social signals simply reflect that your brand is being talked about and  whether content is relevant to the user or not.

Many professionals believe that social media does have an impact on your rankings. Steve Wiideman, SEO expert and president of Wiideman Consulting Group, says that:

....anything you do to influence behavior could influence search rankings. But if that behavior is not sustainable, if it's unnatural or not organic, eventually rankings will drop over time.

We tested with a client to see if their organic search rankings improve significantly when there's a lot of paid traffic from social going to that website/page. We really wanted to know if social traffic is a significant signal for google ranking. We tried out with 2-3k, even 10k, for specific pages as well and saw improvements on average of 2-3 positions on the first page. Also, overall rankings for a majority of search positions improved.

Improve site credibility through social media

From what we observed, Google appreciates the traffic that comes from social networks and the links that come from the company pages on social networks can be a real asset.

Establishing your credibility takes time. There’s no shortcut. The more we talk about a site, the more popular it is, and the more it sends positive signals back to Google. Provided you publish engaging, quality content that interests the community, of course!

Make sure you also check Neil Patel’s article about 41 factors that influence your website’s credibility.

Boost SEO with social media backlinks

What do shared links on social media do? Increase visibility and credibility.

Linking back to your site from social media sites drives traffic and benefits your website from an SEO standpoint. If lots of people share your content on social media, then it’s likely more people will link to it. For example, bloggers exposed to these links will be encouraged to use them which results in additional backlinks.

To get the full benefits of links from your social networks, you must be prepared. Optimize your landing pages to catch and track all traffic from your social media actions. Check your profiles carefully on social networks and be sure they are optimized for results leading to your company's website.

Do you use Twitter? Add a link in your profile.  Do you have a YouTube video? Include a link to your site in the description. This simple optimization of your social networks further improves your SEO from the social media.

Use quality content to help search

Increasing the importance of engagement signals from social networks in the SEO strategy should push you to improve your online presence on all relevant platforms. The biggest players in the social media have millions of regular users, which constitute a traffic resource not to be overlooked.Focus on creating quality content, whether it's an infographic, an article, a video or an inquiry, and use it to draw attention to your social network profiles. Create quality targeted content to drive qualified traffic to your company's website and increase the authority of your domain name.

And as I said in a previous article, when creating content data is a must but it’s not the whole deal.

Final thoughts

In short, without saying with certainty that there is a relation of causality, the correlation between SEO and social networks is very real ... If you share popular content and quality on social networks, the links will start to come naturally (it's almost inevitable!). If they are favorable, your content will gain places in the search results.

Start or continue to do your utmost to maximize a qualitative presence of your company on social networks. Value your social media actions to bring natural traffic to your company's website and increase the authority of your domain name for search engines.

Want to find more about the latest SEO trends and why you should have a SEO strategy plan? Listen to my full interview with Steve Wiideman.