seo-socialSocial Media has a direct impact on the search engine results of your website. From engagement to chasing links – the more activity, the more SEO reward you receive.

For those of us in the Online Marketing space, we have a fairly decent understanding of what SEO entails. We generally know how social media can benefit both the search engine gods as well as in a marketing channel. When it comes to understanding why social media is critical to a businesses online presence, many business owners still turn a blind eye to social media; generally because they don’t have time, knowledge, it is difficult to measure, it has a reputation for being a waste of time or it seems like a pretty non-conventional way to grow a business.

With the SEO rules rapidly changing (and changing once again with the Google rollout of Hummingbird), the game of SEO no longer consists solely of link building and having keyword optimized content (a static approach). The new online marketing economy calls for more dynamic and engaged interaction with individuals. Because websites generally are more static in their architecture, Social Media has become the best place to facilitate this type of dynamic engagement.

Here are a few reasons social media needs to be an integral part of your website marketing and SEO strategy:

Post links to your relevant website content get others to help!

When you have an audience on social media, you wind up with a group of people who can and will share your content. Providing a status update with a link directly back to contextual information on your website (a new blog article for example), not only could spark the reader to chase the link and read your content, but could also lead to that reader forwarding it along to their connections on social networks. Increase your odds of this happening by adding social share buttons! Remember, many of the people who read your content may not be existing or new customers, but that’s not really the point anyhow!

Love it or hate it, Google is measuring your website’s activities on social media channels. How often do you share content on social media networks? How often do people visit your website from those social media network?

It’s a proven fact – most (if not all) links that come from SEO link building never bring any new visitors to your website. They just sit out there pointing to your site and not really doing anything else at all. Google has finally come around to realizing that this tactic only lead to an Internet filled with spam, junk and bad pointers and while most SEO companies build links on sites that will never result in any traffic coming to your website, several have taken this to an extreme where they actually fabricate links in an attempt to boost search engine position. Links coming from social networks however, have the real potential to bring real people into your website AND into your social followers or social circles.

The bottom-line is link building doesn’t help your search engine rankings. In fact, it could hurt you far more than it will ever help you. Google has been very clear about this – stop building fake links to your website and start focusing on providing value and being of value within your marketplace. Social media is the very best place to achieve that goal online today.

Defining a solid social media strategy is the first step towards using social media to help with your SEO efforts. Contact e-Merge Online Marketing to see how we can help with the process.