SOCIAL MEDIA FOR SMALL BUSINESS

There is some debate within the SEO industry regarding the value that social media contributes to a high ranking in Google’s SERPs.

Does Social Media Help SEO?

The head of Google’s webspam team, Matt Cutt said the following in his January 2014 YouTube Video:

“Facebook and Twitter pages are treated like any other pages in our web index so if something occurs on Twitter or occurs on Facebook and we’re able to crawl it, then we can return that in our search results. But as far as doing special specific work to sort of say “you have this many followers on Twitter or this many likes on Facebook”, to the best of my knowledge we don’t currently have any signals like that in our web search ranking algorithms.”

So it would appear that social media does not impact on website ranking. However this contradicts the result of a study done in 2013 by Moz.

This study revealed that pages with Google+1, Facebook likes, tweets and comments overall rank higher than websites without these social media interactions.  However this is just a correlation and not necessarily a causation.  The level of importance too is not clear.

How Does Social Media for Small Business Help with Rankings?

Credibility

Social media can help with getting your website ranking high in Google’s SERPs as successful social media allows Google to see that you are a credible business and thus rank your website higher.

In addition Google also values your social media influence; that is by how many people you are reaching, whether the people are engaging with you.

In effect social media sharing provides ‘votes’ in favour of your website which allows Google to determine the credibility, quality and usefulness of your website. And this is what Google is all about…

Increased Links

Social media activity can lead to increased links to your website. Should you post a video or blog, it maybe that someone else with similar interest may then publish a blog or article that provides a link back to your original video or blog.

Google+

Google+ is a very valuable form of social media for small to medium sized businesses. It is free and easy to set up and should be regularly posted on.

Also you really need to collect customer reviews on your Google+ page as this will help rank the Google+ page as well as providing your potential customers with a level of confidence in your business meeting their needs.  With a Google+ page you have the potential to obtain two listings on the first page of Google as shown in the image below.

Through The Ranks – Social Media for Small Businesses

I (Karen Thorogood) specialise in SEO for Small Businesses. I can be contacted on 0411 403 511 or by email karen@throughtheranks.com.au and am always happy to discuss with you how SEO can help your small business grow.