Social Signals for SEO: Why They Matter and How to Get Them (2023)

We've highlighted 3 reasons why you need to include social signals in your SEO strategy by February 2023.

When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), social signals are far from its spectrum. At least, that's what we're led to believe.

Whatever happens in SEO does not interfere with your social media efforts and vice versa.

The truth is, combining SEO and social media as part of a unified online marketing strategy will drive better results for your online business.

In particular,building social signals can help improve your search ranking.

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Social signals refer to a web page's collective actions, likes, and overall social media visibility as perceived by search engines. These activities contribute to a page's organic search ranking and are seen as another form of citation, similar to backlinks.

This post lists why you should develop a strategy to build your website's social signals and how you can do it successfully.

Reasons why you should increase your presence on social networks

Understanding the impact these signals have as a ranking factor allows you to properly incorporate social signals into your SEO efforts, leading to higher rankings on major search engines.

With that being said, here are the reasons why social signals are essential for your SEO rankings:

#1 – Justify your backlink profile

In addition to high-quality content, a link profile made up of dofollow backlinks from trusted sites is the best way to get your site to the top of Google search fast.

Naturally, you want to launch a link building campaign that focuses on getting those links from high DR/DA sites to maximize results.

However, there is a problem with this particular approach:

You should complement your link building efforts with social media.

If your site has a strong link profile and low social media engagement, Google will see this as a disconnect on your site.

How can a site with lots of good links not have good social activity?

The discrepancy between a website's link profile and social media would lead Google to believe that it is involved in link schemes. The search engine would not rank your site on a par with sites with equally good backlinks.

Whether you are involved in link schemes or not does not matter. What matters to Google and all search engines is this:

Your site will not rank because it does not look natural.

GET JUSTIFICATION OF YOUR BACKLINKS

In that case, you should launch campaigns to build your social signals alongside your link building initiatives.

By sharing your content on social platforms and getting likes and comments from them, you justify the links you get simultaneously.

This tricks Google into thinking that the backlinks your site gets are due to social activity and vice versa.

#2 – Increase click-through rate

Customer reviews are another type of social signal users generate about your business. Users enter their comments about your products and services and give you a star rating to measure their overall experience with your brand.

They can complete this on local business review sites like Yelp or on your Google business profile (if you have one set up).

You may already know that providing the best customer experience is your top priority. If customers like your product enough, they will spread the word to their family and friends, which can lead to referral sales.

From here, your family and friends will recommend your business to others, generating a chain of referrals that can help your business grow even more.

INCREASE THE CTR SIGNALS OF THE SITE

However, the opposite can also occur. For example, if people have had a terrible experience with your business, they will let you know by writing a review about it.

With enough people sharing their bad experiences with your business, it reflects poorly on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Here's an example:

The legitimacy of the classification is an entirely different story. But the fact that a brand ranks low on a trusted platform like Trustpilot raises a lot of red flags. As a result, people who see it on the SERPs avoid the brand and never trust them again.

Therefore, it is in your best interest to launch a campaign that helps improve your customer review rating by getting more than 5.0 ratings from legitimate customers.

That way, you can take advantage of featured snippets that will appear on your brand review sites and convince users to click through to your page.

#3 – Send behavioral signals to search engines

All the shares, likes, and even clicks on the SERPs as a result of the social signals your site receives make up your overall site performance.

And while social signals are a direct SEO ranking factor, the results they produce for people to engage with your site help Google align your site's backlinks with audience engagement.

IMPROVING DOMAIN BEHAVIOR SIGNALS

From here, it comes down to how high Google will index your pages in the SERPs for which keywords.

What does it take to increase your social signals?

Now that you know how social media helps SEO, here are the ways you can create social signals for your business to improve your search engine rankings:

Choose your main social media platforms

Since not all of your audiences will be on all social channels, you need to determine which ones they are on.

To do this, you must have a well-defined buyer persona. For example, finding out your audience's age range, interests, hobbies, pain points, and more gives you a clear picture of who to interact with on social media.

From here, you will be able to determine which platforms to join the social networks relevant to your buyer persona.

Logging into Facebook is almost a no-brainer, as your target audience most likely has an account there. But platforms like TikTok and Instagram are targeting more specific demographics that may or may not appeal to their target audience.

For example, if your business caters to teenagers, you should include both channels in your strategy.

That way, you can maximize your efforts to speak to your audience and gain a following.

Develop and implement the social calendar.

A social calendar is all about wrapping the content you will share on your chosen social channels to boost your social signals.

Consider sharing only your best content on these channels. In addition to your blog posts, posting compelling content from other sites and finding followers allows you to bring even more value to your social networks.

Ideally, you'll want to brainstorm at least a month's worth of social posts. Then schedule those posts using the social media tool of your choice. That way, you don't have to log into your social accounts every day just to post them.

Plus, see the best times to post your posts on social media.

Ultimately the timing depends on who your followers are, but if you don't have a large following yet, you can use what people say is thebest moments to share. This allows you to get your posts when most social users are available, increasing your visibility.

Build relationships with influencers

To accelerate your social growth, you need to establish friendships with influential people in your niche. They have a large following and are considered authorities by the same audience that you share with them.

By being friends with them, you can take advantage of your new relationships to increase your following and get more interactions on your posts in the long run.

Finding influencers is not as simple as looking for the social accounts with the most followers. Check how often they reply and share other people's content. You want to reach the people who give you the best chance of getting answers.

Like your audience, you want to show your value to influencers to get a response. Sharing your content on your social networks or asking questions about your experience are just a few examples.

If done successfully, influencers will return the favor by sharing your content on their channels and engaging your audience.

Even better, some of your followers will follow you on social media to get more of the great content you're producing.

Gather Social Evidence

If you sell products and services, you want customers to leave feedback about them.

After fulfilling the requests, send an email asking them to write a review for your business. Also, set up a follow-up email for customers who didn't leave a review the first time.

Then, let people write a review on your product or service page. If they really enjoyed their purchase, they'll be sure to leave a review, even if you don't ask them to.

Create a "Write a Review" button that opens a form they will fill out for the review. The page will display your reviews so potential customers can see how good your product is.

Getting positive customer reviews allows you to create positive sentiment for your brand, which will be used by search engine algorithms to determine your SEO ranking.

Improve your social signals with Signal Boy!

Doing all of the above should help you generate more social signals for your website, which will help complement your link building strategy.

But achieving all of this isn't as easy as it sounds, as there's a lot you need to do before you can implement your solid social strategy.

However, there are ways to help speed up the receipt of social signals without spending hours or weeks doing it yourself.

Comlineman, we can help you send social signals to your posts in a matter of days! We get real people to share your site on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest.

That way, you can be sure that your link building efforts won't be wasted, as social signals will make your site's climb up the rankings feel as natural as possible. Also, Google will rank your site higher in search results for your keywords.

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