How to Use Social Media to Improve Your SEO

There is no denying that social media is currently playing a major role in the way people use the Internet nowadays. Everyone and everything from major news corporations to seventy-year old grandparents are taking part in social networking sites. If you are currently trying to boost your site’s ranking through the use of search engine optimization then you might be interested to know that social media is now playing a part in SEO. Utilizing the benefits of social media sites can now actually get search engines like Google to take notice of your site.

Read on to learn more about how you can use social media sites for SEO purposes.

• Learn more about your target audience.

If you haven’t launched your SEO campaign yet then you might want to take a look at social media sites to help you get started. This can help you effectively design your SEO efforts by helping your get to know your potential clients first. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook features hundreds of communities, fan pages and other groups that are composed of people with the same interest. If you manage to penetrate these groups, you instantly get to do some market research. By regularly checking blogs, forums and social networking sites, you will get to know what your target audiences are concerned about and you can use this information in your SEO. For instance, you can pick up the most commonly used keywords from social media sites and incorporate them in your content.

• Generate links to your website or blog.

You probably know that link building is an important aspect of SEO. The more quality inbound links you have, the better your chances are for ranking higher in Google. Unfortunately, the amount and quality of inbound links that your site receives are usually beyond your control. You can actually increase your chances of getting good links. While you are interacting with your target audiences, you can post a link or two to your blog post or web page that you think may be relevant to the topic. If the users click on your link and find your content interesting, chances are they might just link to it in their own site or blog.

However, be careful not to use social network as a mere marketing tool. Users will immediately sense if you are just joining the site to promote your blog and this can end up doing more harm to your SEO. Make it a point to truly help others by making your comments useful and interesting.

• Social media ranking affects Google ranking.

You probably know that trying to rank high in Google does not happen overnight. In fact, for most sites, it doesn’t even happen over several months. If this is the case for you then you can make a social media page that leads to your site. Whether it’s a video on YouTube or a Facebook page, social media presence can dramatically boost your ranking over time.