How to use social media to boost your search rankings

Things are changing in the world of SEO. Building backlinks to your site increases your brand’s credibility – and a great way to build those backlinks is through social media.

Now is the time to harness the power of social media to improve your search rankings.  Here’s how:

It’s still about the content

There’s no getting around it. The better your content is, the more shareable it is. And the more your content is shared, the more backlinks you’ll generate, and the higher your search rankings will be.

A great way to find out what people want to read about is to follow conversations on your social networks. What’s the buzz in the industry? What are your fans and followers discussing? Be sure to pay attention to what your followers are re-tweeting and sharing as well, as this is a good indicator of what they’re most interested in. Take your cues from your audience, build content around current hot topics, and you’ll gain more traction with your posts.

Build your backlinks

We’re already starting to see  backlinks from posts on Google+, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter come up higher in search rankings than ever before. You can build your presence on these networks by consistently posting great content. To grow your potential for more backlinks, make it easy for people to share your content by linking to your social platforms via your blog.

If you don’t have one already, set up a Google+ page for your brand. There’s no hard proof that Google+ posts are more heavily weighted than posts on other social networks. However, since Google is the predominant search engine and, as such, has a great deal of influence on where your site comes up in the rankings, it certainly can’t hurt to cover your bases.

Some enlightening stats

This infographic, based on a study by Mitt Ray of Social Marketing Writing, shows the relationship between social media and SEO, and the benefits of  attracting more backlinks to your site, while simultaneously improving your social media presence.

What about you? Are you starting to see a correlation between your social media activity and your search rankings? How are you maximizing the relationship between Social and SEO? Let us know in the comments!