While there has been evidence for several years that social media can and does impact search engine optimization, it has remained fairly obscure in terms of the specific actions or inactions that search engines measure for SEO benefit. Lately, however, search engines are becoming more open about the effects that social media and social signals can have on overall search engine performance, likely in part due to the growing effect of social media on the overall web experience. We are aware of a few ways in which social media affect overall SEO performance, but not everybody understands these concepts. As such, we’ve put together a brief explanation of the ways in which we know social signals affect SEO on a day-to-day basis.

Social Signals Can Affect Traffic

Even though most social media links today are no-follow links in the eyes of search engines, do they have an impact on overall traffic and SEO performance? Despite Google and other search engines not actively assessing social media links in the same way they assess other links, it does monitor the amount of traffic heading to each website or platform via social signals. Pinging links on social media to your website is actually beneficial in the grander scheme of things, as these connections can inevitably help more people find the content. As more and more traffic arrives and inspects the content, the chance of generating more legitimate links from other blogs and websites increases as well. Because of this, social signals can indirectly boost overall rankings through the development of new links brought by traffic.

Social Signals May Affect Domain Authority

There is less concrete evidence for this particular metric, but some evidence suggests that overall social signals and presence can in fact improve domain authority for brands and businesses. While there is a correlation that more social signals are associated with domains that have more authority, there has yet to be causation established. Again, the concept of traffic being driven from search engine social media signals to your website will have some form of effect – as more and more people arrive on your website from these sources, Google and other search engines begin to view your overall domain as more authoritative.

Social Signals Do Boost Link Building Efforts

Traditional link building efforts have been mostly discredited in recent years when compared to their past effects, but building links in ways that generate traffic and that do associate brands with more established and trusted entities is still valuable. As social signals continue to become more prominent, having those signals emanating from the right places can result in more traffic and more impressions made by your brand. Each one of these signals is an opportunity to generate a variety of new, tangible links from established entities that value your content. While pinging links through social media is not yet as authoritative as pinging links directly to search engines through other sites, the indirect effects it provides is slowly but surely helping brands to achieve the desired end result.