Think Before You Engage: 100 Questions to Ask Before Starting a Social Media Marketing Campaign

72. How Can I Use Social Media to Help My SEO?

The immediate benefit of social media is the Google- and Bing-confirmed influence on SEO. In Danny Sullivan's interview with Google and Bing for SearchEngineLand.com in December 2010, Sullivan writes that Google and Bing both use social rank as a factor to determine the rank of page importance. This means that how authoritative and relevant a brand is on a service such as Twitter can influence how authoritative and relevant that brand's website is to a search engine.

The data and its influence on the overall rank as shown in search results is not directly correlated, but the presence of even the slightest bit of influence shows that having a Twitter account that provides useful, informative content that others users consume may be the difference between being on the first page of search results and the second page. Considering the attention span of the general public is getting shorter (hello, 140-character limit), not being on the first page (or at least the first few pages) of your target keyword searches can be detrimental to business.

Website traffic is also noted as a key factor in search-engine ranking, which is a factor that can be directly affected by social media. As a brand develops its social presence and establishes itself as a thought leader or key resource, links direct traffic back to the brand and improve website statistics ...