Everyone is talking about the impact of social media on enhancing search rankings, but did you know that incorporating social media strategies into the SEO mix also reduces the chances of website penalization by Google? And naturally, making sure that your website is not blacklisted by Google is a basic requirement if you want your website to rank high on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
Click here to see the top 5 reasons why websites do get penalized by Google. And we will discuss how social media eliminates many of these reasons.
How Social Media Enhances Search Rankings and Prevents Penalisation by Google
1. Only High Quality Relevant Content is Socially Shared
Content that is widely shared on social networks, and that which receives a high number of social recommendations, ranks higher on the search results. And since social sharing and recommendations are done by real people, (and not automated bots), you can be fairly sure that only high-quality relevant content has any chance of being shared.
Junk content is one of the biggest reasons that Google penalizes websites. Particularly post the Panda update, content quality and relevance have become crucial.
Thus, when you create top quality content, the social signals rank your content high on the SERP and the chances of website penalisation are low.
2. Social Media Creates Natural Organic Back Links
With social media, your content receives more exposure and there are chances that many people will link back to it. (Remember, much of the content shared on social media is high quality, so people are more likely to link back). Thus, you create natural organic back links to your website, which drives up the search rankings.
Junk links are high on Google’s penalization list. Websites that get tons of irrelevant back links, with the hope that these links will enhance their rankings, will actually be penalized by Google. So, a social media strategy that gives you natural back links easily (after all, you are not doing anything to get those links) saves your website from Google penalties.
3. Social Media Ensures Link Diversity and Anchor Text Diversity
Post the Penguin update, Google has become very particular about link diversity. If you have all your links from a single source, it puts Google on high alert and you are likely to lose rankings. With a well-planned social media marketing strategy, you have a portion of your links from social media, which contributes to link diversity and thus enhances your rankings.
Likewise, anchor text diversity is important for search rankings post the Penguin update. If Google finds that the same anchor text is being used to link back to your website, it immediately suspects that these are ‘manufactured’ links and not organic ones and whoosh, your rankings may crash. With social media, when different people are linking back to your site, it is unlikely they will use the same anchor text, isn’t it?
Maintaining link diversity and anchor text diversity is critical to avoid penalization by Google. And social media helps you achieve that.
So it does seem that social media is the magic word for SEO, at least for now.
This is a guest post and has been written by an SEO expert based in Canada, Yasir Khan, founder of Quantum SEO Labs. Quantum SEO Labs offers comprehensive back link SEO services and other SEO strategies for clients.
