How Social Media Helps SEO

Most people do not realize the impact that social media has on search engine optimization. We often see websites with links to social media profiles, such as Facebook and Twitter, only to find that the links lead to inactive profiles and pages. But there are also a lot of websites out there who have learned to utilize social media properly. I will explain to you how to do it properly.

The first step is to create or acquire unique content that is fresh. Webmasters need to create new and fresh content all the time. This content can be anything from website updates, website news, press releases, relevant trends and video presentations to similar blogs, relevant industry news, website promotions and more. Just keep the content coming as content is what gives Google and other search engines more to index, even through social networking.

The second step is to post this content, or excerpts of it, on your social media profiles. When you do this do not forget to provide links to the original content, these links should lead to your website. Providing these links and content will help begin the process of organically building backlinks to your website through your presence on social media websites by encouraging and enticing your visitors to link back to your content, the original article on your website, from their own websites. Remember that the more links back to your website, the greater your search engine rank will be. Your status updates and posts should be the same across all of your social media profiles, but the way that you present them may be different. Although posting on Facebook may differ from the way you post on Twitter, both posts should contain the same information and lead back to the same content.

The third step to succeeding with social media is to set up a queue of content to post. Write or acquire a bunch of articles to post but do not actually post them all at once. Keep them as a back up and have them ready to go when you have nothing else to post or you just need something to post in a hurry.

When people read what you have posted on your social media profiles they will begin to "Like" your posts, "Share" your posts, "Comment" on your posts, "email" your posts, etc. Soon you will see that the sharing your visitors have done has lead to your website gaining "fans" and "followers" who are not only keeping up to date with your website and are talking about your website, but who are also linking back to your website and are continuing to share content from your website.

The result of all of this? More people will visit your website from natural search results and the amount of your organic traffic increases through the roof. This makes your website way more legitimate than what it use to be, or what it would have been without the help of social media.

It does not matter what kind of website you run or the niche your website falls under, getting followers and shares is no problem for any website when the content is fresh and the webmaster running it knows what they are doing and is being consistent.

As webmasters we always try to spread the word about our websites but the viral nature of social media is unprecedented in anything we have used before to spread the word. Using social media will drive people who are interested in your website's topic back to your website and will have a dramatic impact on your overall search engine optimization efforts without spending a lot of money, or any money at all. All it will take is a little but of time and effort.