With all the hype about social media networking in connection to SEO, one question often gets overlooked. That is how, exactly, does social media networking get traffic to your site?

SMM, or social media marketing, is the series of techniques implemented on the various social media sites which aim to draw traffic to a particular site. It’s predicted that businesses will spend a lot more time on social media marketing in the next five years. The increase in use of social media sites by the average internet user would make the connection between SEO and SMM an apparent leap of logic, but a smart business needs to know exactly why it should occupy its time with something that, on the surface, is trivial.

Direct influence on your site

The most direct way participation on a social media site can affect your ranking is through the links it can provide. When you post a comment on a forum, for example, the link you place within your signature can be picked up by the search engines and increase your site’s inbound link density.

Not all social network links are valuable to your site. The bio links on Twitter, for example, were made ‘nofollow’ a few years ago, ruining their SEO potential. There are many social media sites, however, that do provide link juice. As anyone who has tried to chase down a link from a high-ranking site will have learnt, these owner-controlled links are very valuable.

Indirect influence for your site

After direct links, most search engine optimisation firms aim to get secondary links from social media sites. Each social media site will have its own unwritten – and written – rules about behaviour. When your aim is to generate inbound links, it’s essential that you pay attention to these rules. In this way, you will engage with the community and in return the community will engage with you.

Well-designed content is essential if you want to impress internet users enough for them to forward your message or connect to your site. You can talk to us at SEO Consult about this kind, and other kinds, of internet content.

Long-term impact on the net

One of the major benefits of off-page SEO is that it can have a continuing impact in the long term. The elements of your site’s pages are extremely vulnerable to change. Establishing connections with other sites on the net, building your business image and generally getting yourself out there are all things that can stay with you until you close your business.

The long-term benefit of a successful social media campaign is the community you develop. While your page rankings will fluctuate depending on current algorithms and statistics, a well-developed brand reputation can hang around for years. If you perform a particularly memorable feat on any social media site, the chances are that your site’s reputation is set for the distant future. The word-of-mouth benefits of this alone make social media participation worthwhile.

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