There isn’t a precise answer to this question, however, social signals such as likes on Facebook Page or follower count on Instagram may not leave a direct impact on search results but they certainly have an indirect effect on the website ranking.
Social signals are responsible for driving engagement to the website, which converts into outbound links, citation visibility improves, bounce rate lowers down and repetition rate of visitors increases. This outcome ultimately accelerates the organic search ranking.
Introduction
Social sharing is considered as a fundamental method to make a strategy work. If your social media profiles are effective PR channels and quite active on a regular basis and the synergy of content with the audience is appropriate, it will definitely become a powerful factor in making your SEO strategy successful.
According to the reports, Google algorithms do not keep record of the number of followers or likes on Facebook or twitter. It might not be tracking the retweets or likes it has got but all these attributes leave a ripple effect on the ranking go the website. These social signals provide Google information about the updates that your channels are posting and indicates that the website was being talked about, which determines the rate of engagement.
Though its debatable but its still considered that direct impact from social signals occurs due to some factors such as number of likes on Facebook, number of Facebook shares/ Twitter followers, number of tweets or links mentioned on the network, number of people in your Google+ circles and so on. While indirect impact causes due to factors like inbound links and citation occurred by brand visibility, positive reviews, deteriorated bounce rate, frequent or repeat visitors on the website.
There are many websites from where you can check social shares such as SharedCount, but none of them are dead accurate.
See also: Why Social Bookmarking is so useful?
Improves Page Rank
Apart from that, its believed when social signal turns into social shares the value magnifies. The number of shares depends on the content quality that will lead to more traffic on the site. Such indirect relation results into outbound links and considered relevant in improving citation visibility. When your brand starts to gain more social shares and referrals of site traffic quality links build up which helps in elevating the SERP rank.
One must know that more follower count will not boost Page rank, rather the website gets its validation from backlinks and referral traffic. A well-executed social media campaign can assist you in improving SEO of your website as well. Here are some supportive factors a marketer must be aware about while planning a social media marketing strategy:
Multiply your content sharing
Social channels are being discovered as a powerful medium for content dissemination. Content if shared with similar interest people, the engagement rate will tremendously improve, and such like-minded viewers will turn into site visitors. The strategy of sharing might differ depending upon the nature of the business and the audience you target. Although Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are three most common networks for content distribution and can amplify your message further.
Engross visitors for more
Rich content can keep anyone engrossed, plus offering the consumers credit score for sharing your content can keep them engaged and interested for long. Its the most productive method in making any marketing campaign successful. As per experts, steady referral traffic will increase only with social media sharing. While posting anything on your blog or website, share links across all networks and re-link of content shared will keep driving the traffic when you would offer or credit scores to your customers. Its a tried and tested formula and adds value to the repeat value of your website.
Temporary hype
Social signals or sharing can drive referral traffic but they cannot keep them pumped forever. According to a case study, direct traffic through social media channels cannot be relied upon as a permanent traffic provider for direct sales but it works for SEO. Also it can magnify the frequency of content sharing and visibility but in case the goal is to pump up your sales then you should funnel the traffic separately and target them for sales and design the marketing strategy that will include such leads into your clients.
Social sharing and temporary visitors cannot ensure a permanent solution and community for your website, one needs to have a much sorted out marketing plan to deal with the limitations of SEO and traffic generation. New audience remains awaited and unaware about the plans you want to offer. Therefore, to continuously work and improve on the strategy, you need to come up with an idea that can not just boost the brand visibility but also must contribute more to the inflow of the traffic and also in engaging leads.
