While social media provides no direct benefits to your site’s search rankings, it does provide many indirect benefits.
Social media allows you to tap into a large audience who can help to share and amplify your content. This increased distribution and visibility can lead to more traffic, which in turn, does give Google a nice signal on your site’s popularity and authority.
Sharing content with your followers can help you craft your marketing message. By closely monitoring which types of content your audience finds most engaging, you can fine-tune your content strategy – perfecting and producing more of the stuff your followers like.
Recycling content gives more reach to your post
Social media can give your content wings and extend its lifespan. A great blog post might have little effect if your main channels for discovery are search results, mailing list subscribers or regular site visitors. Tapping into the potentially viral nature of social media can help ensure that your engaging new content has an opportunity to be seen and recycled.
Help Google Index Your New Content
Posting to social media will help to get your content indexed faster – especially if your content gets shared on multiple profiles. Google is constantly crawling social media for valuable new info, so it’s a great way to inform the big G about a new article you just wrote. The sooner Google indexes your posts, the sooner they can serve them up in relevant searches.
Social for branding
Being active on social media can help you ‘own’ your brand. Depending on the keywords, social profiles may even outrank your business website in search results. Having an active social media presence can give you a monopoly on search results related to your vertical. And while a Facebook update as a search result may not be equally valuable as a link to a sales page on your website, it still promotes your brand visibility and authority.
Social media’s effects on local rankings
When it comes to a local brick and mortar businesses, Google Plus can offer a direct impact when it comes to local search. This is one case where maintaining a social profile does offer a direct benefit to search rankings.
Matt Cutts talks about social media’s impact on search engine rankings
To those of us in the SEO world, Matt Cutts is like E.F. Hutton. When he has something to say regarding ranking signals, we all listen and take note.