Everyone wants to rank better on Google;

no one wants to be on page 2 or 3 in a Google search result. It’s no surprise that this is why you’re reading this article; you want to rank better too. If you’re anything like me, you’re tired of spending a whole lot of money on methods that just don’t seem to work and that’s why your search has to lead you here. With limited resources, you need to know where to focus your efforts to have confidence in getting your rankings up and also stable. It’s quite easy to get confused by the many articles that highlight the importance of Google’s 200 ranking factors (you probably don’t even know all of them yourself).

In a few moments, you’re going to learn about how Google treats content and how that all plays a part in improving your rankings. And the best part is you don’t need to be an expert to take advantage of the information that I’m about to share with you. This information will not only help you to increase your brand awareness but also to increase customer acquisition and boost your products or services.

Where are your customers?

I’ve always gotten the old school advice that if you’re looking for a book then the best place to look is in the library. So if you’re looking to get stable rankings, wouldn’t it be best to first find out where most of your potential customers are hanging out online in order to offer them your services? There are close to 3 billion social media users worldwide, up by 22% this year. That’s approximately a 37% global penetration according to a research done by Social Media Today.

It’s no wonder so many companies are investing in social media customer service strategies training for their employees. But why you might ask? A study done by Gartner found that “the dissatisfaction stemming from failure to respond via social channels can lead to up to a 15% in churn rate for existing customers”, so while your goal is to gain stable ranking, social media customer service strategies are key to that overall goal. The more satisfied customers you retain then the more they talk about you on social media, the more they talk about you online then the more Google recognizes your brand.

How does Google treat Social Media content and how does this affect your ranking?

Google uses Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to effectively rank pages. SEO is the process of getting traffic from the free or organic search results on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Google’s objective is to always provide the most relevant results to the user’s request; promoting authority pages at the top of its rankings.

The YouTube channel Google Webmasters released a video with Google’s Matt Cutts in 2014. In that video, while Cutts made it very clear that Google does not use social signaling to rank your pages, he did however, state that “Facebook and Twitter pages are treated like any other pages in our web index, and 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.” Many SEO and internet marketing experts outline that posting links to your websites on popular social media websites can definitely boost your rankings and grow your business. The links that are posted on a social media account such can be recognized as credible backlinks and thereby influencing page ranks.

How does all of this tie in to give you better rankings?

With almost 3 billion monthly active users on social media, it has become a very powerful tool to drive traffic to your website which will help you to rank well. You can drive traffic to your website via social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and others using a simple 4-step system. And the best part is we’re giving those steps to you for FREE! If you follow these simple steps then you will be able to use the traffic from social media to boost your website statistics, therefore, increasing your Google rank:

1. Create social media accounts that you will use to gain an audience/following
2. Write articles (and social media posts) that offer great content, using keywords and phrases that your potential customers are searching for and post them to your social media accounts.
3. Include social sharing buttons on your website and ask persons to share your content with their friends on social media.
4. Repeat steps 2 & 3

By using your social media profile to post short sentences with a link to your blogs, you will start to generate traffic from your profile to your website for free (especially if your followers share content from your website). But you won’t achieve this by simply posting a link to your website on your profile. You see, when you post a link on your social media, it is flagged with a “nofollow” tag which instructs Google’s search engine bots that the link should not influence the link target’s ranking. But by including keywords in your profile’s bio, headlines, summaries, posts, and links, that your target audience would be likely to use which would actually display your profile in search results.

It’s simple logic. The larger your following on social media is the more it helps Google to measure the authenticity of your users’ click through from social media to your website. After all, you wouldn’t have had a community of followers visiting your website if you were only posting a bunch of shams. Also, the more your posts are shared the more search engines assume that the content is of value. You just need to ensure that those posts contain the keywords that your target audience may be searching for.

Remember that Google’s main objective is to always provide the most relevant results to its users. Therefore, once persons search for those keywords they may come across your profile and the content that you post, some of which includes a link to your website. Those readers who visit your website and love the content will naturally share it on social media thus increasing the authenticity of click through which improves your website statistics that will rank you better on Google.

As your social media community and brand begins to grow, it will help to reinforce your relevance. This will lead to persons reaching out you and commenting on your posts on a daily basis and perhaps asking about your products or services. It will be very important that you learn good social media customer service strategies in order to keep your audience fully engaged and talking about your brand. That being said, social media can definitely help you to increase your rankings by making posts that engage your users enough that they want to naturally share your content as well. Quality is key.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor
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