The SEO industry is constantly debating how social media can influence SEO. It’s a subject that never gets old. The reason is simple: social media is important for SEO, but not the way you think. Not familiar with SEO ? Learn what is SEO here.

Yes, social media and SEO may look different, but there’s no question that they help each other.

However, contrary to popular belief, social networks do not directly contribute to SEO. In other words, social metrics do not directly help rank better.

The links you share on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin can help your brand get more visibility, but they are not perceived by Google as a ranking signal.

Now, here’s the problem: even if social media isn’t a ranking factor, it matters if you take a closer look. Indeed, indirectly, social networks have a positive effect on the ranking of a page.

So yes, there is a correlation between the position of a site in SERPs and social performance. If you study the sites that rank first in Google, you will find that many of them have strong social metrics.

Why Google doesn’t take social metrics into account

Does Google search and index the social media profiles / pages of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn? Yes of course.

Does he see content and links published differently? No, it treats them like a normal HTML page on a site.

Regarding social metrics, Google does not take into account the number of shares on social networks or the number of followers of a page when ranking in its index.

Why ? Simply because it would be too easy for anyone to cheat the system and faker the number of shares or followers.

In addition, it is important to note that sharing on social networks is done 24/7. This means that Google would have to crawl the same page all the time to be able to track it correctly, which would obviously cost too much.

We don’t know how much data Google accesses on the main social networks, and we don’t know if this affects SEO.

What we do know, however, is that social media plays an indirect role in helping people find your brand in search engine results. And for now, that’s all that matters.

3 reasons to optimize your social networks to improve your SEO – your natural SEO

SEO is about gaining visibility and getting more people to visit your site organically. SMO (social media optimization), on the other hand, is about getting the most out of social media and getting noticed by the right people in order to grow in popularity – see our last event in Jakarta on the topic: “Jasa Iklan Google

The two may seem different, but their goals overlap. In fact, they are intimately linked. This is why search engines are increasingly highlighting social networks, and social networks are gradually turning into search engines.

Let’s examine three valid reasons why you should focus your efforts on social media if you want to improve your SEO results.

1 / The content of social networks is indexed

Good content on social media, posted regularly, can make a huge difference to your overall content marketing campaign.

And when you understand that your social media posts can be crawled by search engine crawlers and indexed, that changes everything.

Now, that doesn’t mean that every tweet or post on Facebook is going to be listed in Google’s index. Indeed, it must be relevant enough that they can be found by people who are looking for exactly that type of content.

What’s even better is that social media can help you index your site content faster because of the way search engines handle social media content. Indeed, if your blog post gets a lot of shares and likes, it will eventually enter the index at a faster rate.

Crawlers will therefore find your content more easily because it will generate a “buzz”.

2 / Social networks help gain credibility

Search engines give a lot of weight to a site’s authority, making it a critical SEO factor to focus on.

In the eyes of search engines, if your page or domain has great value, it has great authority. And a better chance of ranking above sites that don’t have such strong authority. This topic was covered in French in “Créer un site de vente en ligne“.

The authority of a page or site increases over time. As you post content and get relevant backlinks, your authority keeps growing.

The content you publish, if it is qualitative, gives your audience what they are looking for. Which will certainly lead to sharing on social networks or even on other blogs, which will indirectly give you backlinks.

By focusing on building a committed social media community, your content will be perceived in a much more positive light, will facilitate obtaining backlinks and will increase your domain authority aka your credibility in the eyes of Google.

3 / Search engines and social networks share the same long-term vision: people

Although classic and local SEO is often technical, it’s not the only way to improve your ranking.

Most blackhat practices, for example, are technical in nature, but do not yield long-term results because they do not take users into account. These methods do not take into account the human side, while search engines specifically seek to improve the user experience.

Search engines have always tried to push the user experience to its climax and go beyond the technical aspects.

If you want to have good SEO in 2018, you cannot just depend on technical factors such as the loading speed of your site or other growth hacking techniques. Your SEO strategy must take into account a human element to obtain real results. Otherwise, you will quickly be beaten by someone who has taken the time to create valuable content.

Beyond sharing content, social networks can be considered a key factor in optimizing your site. Indeed, social networks provide you with much more information than they seem. They give you the opportunity to segment your audience, to target exactly the people you want. In addition, you know perfectly by whom your content is consumed and shared, and the type of impact it has. This type of information is a gold mine for your SEO.