As we have talked about before, social media is integral to the continued success of an SEO campaign. Not only is it a fantastic method for raising brand awareness and increasing traffic to your site, it’s also a great way to build useful and quality backlinks at the same time. It is a win / win situation…
Isn’t it?
As with most things SEO related, the most appropriate answer to that is “yes and no.” In terms of the usefulness of backlinks from social media, there are two types of links that we are concerned with: DoFollow & NoFollow. DoFollow links are links that the search engines have permission to follow, while NoFollow are links that deny following by the search engines. (Shocking, I know)
What does that mean and what does it have to do with your social media linking?
To put it very simply, the more “DoFollow” links you can get on your reputable social media sites, the better it is for you SEO campaign.
Now I know what a lot of people are probably thinking at this point… That they can just add a bunch of links to their Facebook business page posts and Twitter profile and that will be that. Job done. Unfortunately, that isn’t entirely accurate… although you can potentially get more traffic that way through having a large following, the links posted on Facebook & Twitter are all “NoFollow.” By narrowing your scope of social media solely to Facebook & Twitter, you are really limiting your SEO campaign.
I know that a lot of people still consider other social media outlets like Google Plus and Pinterest a little redundant and less vital from a business perspective, but if you are trying to promote a search engine optimization campaign then these sites serve an important function.
Google Plus
On Google plus, sharing links can take two different forms.
This is an example of the first kind of link, which was copy and pasted into my post, following a brief description on why I think people should read it (technically, the description is optional and has nothing to do with the link building).
It is also a “NoFollow”
On the other hand…
This kind of linking is so much more desirable for many reasons.
For one thing, the preview and title make the link much more appealing to your audience, meaning they are much more likely to view what you are sharing.
Also, this is a “DoFollow” link (this is a twist of M. Night. Shyamalan proportions, I am sure)
The easiest way to ensure you are submitting the right kind of link to Google plus is to “+” it from the source itself (so get your social media buttons installed, pronto). But if you want to copy and paste the link, make sure you actually add it as a link.
Believe it or not, I recently had a client ask me specifically about Pinterest and what benefit it could possibly be to their SEO campaign. At the time, I mentioned a lot about raising brand recognition as well as the growing importance of all social media for the future of SEO. Now I can add another benefit!
Blogger / Blogspot
This one isn’t so much about having a social media profile, but a key thing to keep in mind with blogger outreach. The links you get in a Blogger post are currently “DoFollow” so are incredibly valuable to SEO.
At the end of the day SEO is still a popularity contest. It’s all about getting your name out there in a variety of ways and really promoting your website. The value in a Google Plus profile may be very different to that of a Facebook profile, but they are both important.
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