The controversy surrounding the importance of social networks in website promotion continues to this day. This happens rather an by inertia – the influence of social signals on the site’s position has long been obvious.
Social signals
Social mediasignals represent a variety of audience activity on social networks, which is expressed in likes, reposts, comments, posts with links leading to your site, as well as the number of clicks on these same links. All of this is closely monitored by search engines and reflected in search results.
Likes
The ubiquitous distribution of widgets with the ability to like any material without leaving the site is associated not only with the desire to integrate with social networks. Despite the seemingly formal function, the number of likes is taken into account by search engines and affects the ranking of the site. This is especially true for Facebook page likes.
Reposts
Reposts are an even more effective social signal – especially if they are made by “authoritative” users with a large number of real followers. Search engines pay attention to this indicator, therefore, on sites with a competent promotion policy, we often see social media widgets next to them with a call to share material.
Account activity and traffic
Search bots understand perfectly how “dead” groups and pages in social networks differ from live and active ones. A high-quality account or group not only pleases subscribers with regular posts and stimulates the influx of new users, but is also an important source of traffic due to clicks on published links. Widgets installed on-site pages make a significant contribution to increasing the audience of a group or account, as well as maintaining user activity.
Role of behavioral factors
Behavioral factors (namely, how the user who visits the site behaves) seriously affect the position of the site in the search results. If the user lingers on the page, reads most of the content presented, or even comes back again, then he satisfied his interest, which prompted him to click on the link.
It’s easy to imagine how the behavior of two users differs, one of whom got to the site through a request in a search engine, and the other – through a link in a social network. As a rule, a person who comes from a social network is much better prepared to perceive the presented content. Usually, a post in a group, public, or account contains a preview and a short announcement of the material or product posted on the site. This post is seen mainly by a prepared audience, which is either subscribed to the group or is interested in the relevant topic. Such users have a better idea of what awaits them on the site, and therefore after the transition, they spend more time on the resource, carefully studying the pages and often returning to them.
This is quality traffic that is appreciated by search engines and has a great influence on website promotion.
At the same time, a cool bonus of traffic from social networks is the speed at which the pages that the public goes to are indexed.
For example, you add a new product to the catalog that is theoretically in demand and interesting to a large number of users. If you just added it and thought that your work was done, then the search engines will index it after a certain period of time. Long enough (several days) for a page with a product (or a new article on a blog – the essence does not change), “idle” idle, not bringing any profit or leads.
Quite a dull picture, isn’t it?
The situation changes dramatically if, after adding a product, article, or any other content to the site, you make a post on the social network informing your subscribers. Everything is standard – a tempting announcement, page preview – and the target audience almost immediately begins to go to the site.
But that’s not all.
Such a prepared and intrigued user, most likely, will not limit himself to viewing one product or material and will make additional clicks on other links of interest to him. By making transitions between pages within the site, and lingering on them, the visitor increases their importance for search engines.
The relationship between social media bots and search engine bots
When promoting a site using the activity of users in social networks, one more interesting feature should be taken into account. Own bots of social networks instantly respond to the publication of any link, following it to the site. This is done, for example, by Facebook, VK, and Twitter bots. And immediately after them, the page is visited by search engine bots.
The fact is that search engine bots are very closely watching social media bots, following them. By publishing a post on a social network, you attract not only the target audience to the site but also search bots. This, again, has a positive effect on the speed of page indexing – especially since search engine bots that come from a published link do not stop at one page. If it contains links to relevant materials or other sections of the site, the bot will certainly study them, since its duties include checking for updates to previously indexed pages.
Using this simple feature of the behavior of search bots, you can achieve regular and frequent indexing of site pages, with an increase in its position in search engines.
Conclusions
The importance of social signals coming from social networks is growing – search engines are paying more and more attention to them. It is necessary to use social media tools even if your presence in social networks is not a priority due to the specifics of your activity. At the same time, when promoting a site, one should not rely only on social networks – today they can help significantly improve the position of an already optimized site, but at the same time, they are unlikely to be effective when it comes to a poorly optimized resource.
