How social media affects your search results

Ranking well in search results is just as important as attracting customers to your business. If you don't know how social media can affect your search results, read on.

What the search engines are looking for

Firstly, you need to understand what search engines are looking for so you can recognise how social media affects search results. For example, the authority of your tweets, how many +1s your URL gets, how many Facebook likes and shares your URL gets and how many tweets and retweets your URL gets.

Every time someone mentions your local business on social media, it helps to improve your search ranking. How large your following is and how much engagement your social posts receive also plays a role. Here's an example:

Luigi's Italian Restaurant in New York City received a tweet from a local newspaper about its delicious dishes. This tweet was favourited 400 times and retweeted 50 times. Both the newspaper's and Luigi's Twitter handles became active as a result. Because the Luigi's URL was linked to the Twitter account, the Luigi's website was able to get better search engine rankings

How this can help local businesses

Social media engagement can help improve your rankings, even for keywords that are otherwise difficult to rank highly for (the generic ones). However, this works best for keywords that have little competition. So if the keyword that's causing a stir on social media is "Italian food", you could rank high for that keyword. Local businesses can take advantage of this because it helps them improve their business' search results for these common but necessary keywords.

When sharing content, make sure you include low competition keywords such as "authentic Italian food in New York" so that they can gain exposure on social media and improve your search engine rankings. The more content you share from your website on social media, the better your website will rank, which means more traffic will be generated for your website.

How you can optimise your SEO

Before you start your SEO campaign for social media, you should check how you have performed so far. You can do this with the free tool LocalVox check. Make sure you know which keywords are the most important ones to rank for. You can LocalCast use , an SEO tool that helps you track your ranking and find keywords that you can use to optimise your website and social media posts.

A deeper understanding of your social signals and their effects

So you know that the more active you are on social media, the better your search results will be. Let's now take a look at how exactly this works for the various social networks:

• Google+: Compared to Twitter and Facebook, Google+ is still in its infancy, but it has a huge impact on social content. It works like this: the more +1s, the better. You should try to get +1s for your brand profile, your website and your posts on social media. When your brand page gets a lot of +1s, it gives you more authority, which will help your future content rank higher. Your authority is also determined by how many followers you have and how often your content is shared. Your social media strategy should include a method to generate more and more +1s over time. It's important that you focus on a network of people with great profiles because who knows you can help establish your voice.
• Facebook: Facebook is used by over 900 million people, making it the ideal platform to improve your search results. There are studies that show that Facebook has a bigger impact on your search rankings than Twitter or Google+ (keep that in mind). The more shares and likes your posts receive, the better your rankings will be. The number of comments you receive is also helpful - if you get a lot of likes, shares and comments, your ranking will improve significantly.
• Twitter: With approximately 500 million users, Twitter posts improve rankings when the tweets have authority, as opposed to quantity. Factors that can help your search results include the authority of your followers, mentions and retweets, the number of followers, mentions and retweets you have, and the speed and intensity of your tweets and retweets over time.

There are other social media sites such as Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Reddit, FourSquare and Digg that you can utilise. These are the factors that play a role in ranking better on these sites:

• Pinterest: How many pins, re-pins and comments you receive, and the growth rate of these pins and re-pins.
• FourSquare: How many check-ins and the distribution rate of these check-ins.
• Reddit, Digg and StumbleUpon How many upvotes and comments you receive.

Link building via social media

Link building is not a new concept and is just as valuable today as it was 10 years ago. However, it has become much easier thanks to social networks. In the past, people tried to build links using "black hat" tactics, such as spammy comments on forums and blogs. Today, you can integrate link building into your social media strategy. For example, you can include links to valuable content from your blog in the social media posts you publish.

Improve your Google ranking through the use of social media

There are many benefits that local businesses can gain from social media accounts. You can become an authority, gain a larger following, network with influencers and increase inbound traffic through link building and organic search results. Social media has a huge impact on the way we do business today, and if you utilise it correctly, you can steadily increase the customer base for your local business.