What can social media provide in terms of SEO? At MWI we hear many of these inquiries from customers who are currently or are considering becoming clients. Social media is a fast growing channel for marketing that most businesses have only recently begun using in the last few years, but it's essential to utilize it particularly if you're investing resources into search engine optimization. Setting up and managing social media accounts is extremely important for supporting SEO efforts, though the benefits may not be immediately evident. Here are five reasons social media is vital to SEO.

1.) Social Media Signals
It's no secret that Google, Bing and other major search engines are using online dialogue as part of their algorithm for ranking for a long time. A social engagement is when people comment, like on, share or tweet about content. Content that has the highest number of social engagements will show higher social signals. These social signals are used by search engines to rank content. This allows search engines to decide what content people consider to be most valuable and what algorithm they believe to be good quality. If the content you're looking at receives lots of social interaction It can be quickly indexed.

2.) Link Building
It's long gone from the time that you could get hyperlinks from other sites. Google's Panda/Penguin algorithms are forcing SEOs to build links in the traditional way: create top-quality content that's relevant. How do you reach websites that are willing to link to your content, if asking them directly would be considered "unnatural"? Social media is the answer. Social media lets you expose your content to interested audiences who might 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.) Amplification of content
You can create all the excellent content you'd like to, but it won't gain any traction without amplifying it. Email marketing is a great way of amplifying content , but it can only get to those on your marketing list. You can also reach new audiences via social media. Once you share your content, your following will spread it to their networks in the event that they find it helpful. They will also be able to share your content with their followers, https://community.windy.com/user/oilhorn83 thereby increasing your reach. You'll also get relevant traffic as well as inbound linking social signals, inbound linking, and brand recognition, all of which are used by search engines to make to determine the quality of your content.

content amplification lifecycle

4) Brand Recognition and Signals
Brand identity and awareness can inform search engines many things about the quality of your website as well as the extent to which it can be trusted in its ranking algorithms. Social media can help build an image for your business and also boosts the quality of your content. This is what Google refers to as a co-citation. Co-citations can be created by using social media to boost Google's trust as well as aid with branded searches.

5.) Social Indexing
Search engines have been indexing social media profiles since a while and this means that they show up in search result pages. This enables your brand to show up in search results for your branded search queries on more than the site of your business. It gets even more effective. Individual Tweets from Twitter were previously indexed and appeared in search results as well providing another method to ensure your content's ranking in search. It was only temporary for a few months, until Google made the decision to stop the service, and it's still in place. Google will once again show tweets in search results, so it's important to leverage it for getting your content ranked.