In today’s era of information and technology, the entire world runs on social media platforms. Everything has surfaced online, from reading newspapers to attending classroom lectures, from medical consultancies to booking tickets. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have helped find new avenues and opportunities for people to grow in their careers and businesses. It has even facilitated people to showcase their talents, present their views, share ideas, and earn money. But this isn’t enough if one wants to sustain their career through such social media platforms. The internet works on specific algorithms where one has to be regularly visible online with their content to reap the benefits of social media. People are even taking up social media management courses to get better at it. Tremendous factors are there which affect rankings in Google directly or indirectly. However, social media visibility can be increased with the increase of social signals. Before starting with the topic of how to improve it, let us learn about what these social signals are, how they can affect the growth of an individual, and why it is considered a ranking factor. Later on, after digging through all these topics, we’ll further dive into the ways by which we can improvise social signals for SEO.
How do likes, shares, and views help the growth of content?
Looking to boost your social media fans with genuine followers? Wondering how to attract interested viewers? So here’s the answer. The number of likes, shares, and views can impact your growth on social media platforms. Let’s see how. You need to gather more audience to be more successful with your marketing. The more people you reach with your content, the more popular your content will be. However, there are a few ways by which you can elevate your popularity level. Newer media can elevate the success rate tremendously. However, spending a few hours with your content and staying engaged can boost your reach. Furthermore, maximizing the viewers, likes, and shares can take your content to a large audience. Higher reach is always better for the growth of your social media content. For instance, if a user often likes your content, then it is more likely that the user will be suggested your content on their feed. Similarly, more shares and views also influence a large audience.
What exactly are the Social Signals?
Social signals are simply people’s responses to the online content floating on social media platforms. These are likes, dislikes, views, shares, comments, tweets, and retweets. The more such recorded responses, the more popular and mainstream content is. Therefore, one has to remain visible on the internet to gain more such reactions. Moreover, from an SEO perspective, social signals are the signals that improvise search engines and make an individual familiar with the identity, popularity, and reliability of their profile or post. However, for various platforms, a variety of metrics are there that can be termed social signals.
How do social signals impact SEO?
Social signals indicate the degree to which a particular content floating online has reached the targeted audience. For instance, a person flows a video on Instagram sharing vital information about Covid-19 disease. The number of likes and views he gets on the video will indicate the content’s relevance and importance. The more the number of opinions and preferences, the more visible the content will be in top internet searches as it indicates high-quality content. Ultimately, search engines work their best to provide quality content to their users, which is according to the users’ reactions. That is why social signals are essential for SEO. They help generate traffic on certain content, signaling the web algorithm to create results. Hence, social signals have an indirect impact on SEO performance. Although studies and experiments are still going on to discover the exact impact, they have not been revealed yet.
Social Signals Ranking Factors for Google
Whenever a question pops into our mind, or we want to get information about something, we instantly Google it. Google tries to give its users the most relevant and valuable answers through various links and websites. Such websites are arranged according to the most visited ones. According to Google, these websites offer quality information to users. These websites have generated good traffic through viewers’ past recorded responses which we call social signals. Social signals, therefore, play a key role in Google rankings and SEO. Furthermore, for Google, every piece of content online is valuable but what it values the most is the content that has received the most significant number of responses. However, Google doesn’t officially declare social signals as a ranking factor, as plenty of factors impact Google rankings directly. These include backlinks, search intent, content quality, freshness, and many more. But we can’t decline from the fact that more social engagement results in more visibility of social posts. Giving a little time can positively impact your SEO and ranking in Google. Remember to focus on visibility and brand awareness while posting. This can help you throughout your social media journey. Since we now have a better understanding of social signals and their importance for SEO, let us discuss how we can improve social signals for SEO. Aside from engaging on social media, these are the things you can do every time you post.
Link Website to Social Media Profiles
Linking a website to your social media profiles is an easy yet essential way to increase web traffic and improve SEO. Your profile gets more chances of getting viewed when you link the website in your profile. Not only this, attaching links in the profile enhances user experience too. Linking sites in your social media profiles directly introduces viewers to your web page. Furthermore, Google is also seeking to link websites to social media accounts. Linking websites can enhance your user experience. However, substituting websites for your social media platform can increase the reach of your content. Moreover, it will make it easier for people to read your other content. Hence, linking makes the sharing process easier and more convenient.
Optimize Social Media Profiles
Your social media profile should be such that it meets the quick requirements of search engines. This is what optimization is all about. For instance, if you have a web page or a blog post, using appropriate keywords can make your post more visible on the search engine for the person looking for it. Similarly, social media profiles should be sufficient to provide all the related information users want. Moreover, accurate keywords can help Google to understand the relationship between your website and keywords easily. An optimized social media profile will positively drive traffic, increase email subscribers and boost sales, whereas an unoptimized social media profile can’t. However, you need to attract more audiences to avoid hindering your business growth. This targeted audience will ultimately become genuinely interested customers. Here are a few ways mentioned by which you can optimize your social media profile:
Clarify the brand name – This will help catch the user’s attention and keep them engaged with your content.
Upload a good-quality profile picture – Remember that your profile should represent your brand name. Don’t leave your picture blank to make it easy for people to trust you.
Use proper hashtags – These will allow users to search for you more easily. These brand-related hashtags sort your content by category.
Publish Regularly on Social Media
Social media is all about content. The more frequently you add content, the more it will be acknowledged by internet users. But posting anything does not work. Your content is more likely to receive likes and comments if it is engaging for netizens and your profile becomes more visible if you post content regularly.
Post Relevant Content
Though the internet is full of content, to have a good SEO ranking for your content, you need to have factual content. It should be equally engaging and should provide relevant information to users. Posting trash and out-of-user interest content will be overlooked. Your content should be appealing enough to attract a large number of viewers. Relevant content increases its authenticity, which is acknowledged by search engines too.
Add Social Sharing Buttons
If you want your content to be seen and many people to share it too on the internet, make it convenient for users to do so. You can do this simply by adding social sharing buttons for your content. Your content will have more chances of being shared if you provide an option to do so. For example, most social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube offer options for content creators to share their posts, and other viewers too can share them further.
Use of Schema Tags
For a good SEO ranking for your content, use open graphs and schema tags to make it more visible. This is more required if you post your content on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Adding tags helps your content get more viewers, ultimately improving SEO ranking. The absence of labels and open graphs makes your content less likely to be clicked and gets less user attention.
Be Active on Social media
Posting your content once in a while and then not doing it for days isn’t good for SEO. You must post your content frequently on social media platforms, say once in two days, to be visible online. Apart from this, you should actively respond to what others are posting online. You can, too, respond to other people’s posts.
Include a proper Author Bio
If you are writing a blog post for an author, it will be a great idea to mention important details about the author too, or even tag their profile later in the blog post. This elevates the value of your blog post and increases its trustworthiness. By doing this, people not only get to know about the author but also about the post creator too. Search engines take such posts as authenticated content, thereby improving SEO.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, good content is what everybody is looking for. It is every content creator’s responsibility to provide worthy information to people. The more valuable the data is, the more it will be preferred. Accurate data will help your content to sustain a good rank on the internet. The internet is an ocean of content. Remember the points above if you want your profile or blog post to be visible. These above-mentioned points will help your content to sustain a good rank on search engine results, thereby improving SEO. A well-designed blog post fetches a good number of viewers and their responses. You may explore some best social media calendar tools and templates.