There have been an amazing number of changes in SEO efforts over the past several years, and one of the big shifts has been the importance of social media. While having a good social media presence is a smart idea in and of itself, since it gives you so many ways to reach your target audience, but as backlinks that are from random blogs and websites or that are keyword anchored are less useful or even harmful to modern SEO efforts, the links from social media become all the more valuable. That’s even before the updates that made social media evidence and a social media footprint a much more major part of ranking in the search engines than it had been previously. Read on to learn why social media is such an important part of your modern SEO efforts.

Google is looking for a social media footprint
Not only are Facebook, Twitter, and other social media websites great at keeping up with your intended audience and keeping your presence online, but search engines actually look for a fully developed social media footprint nowadays. Having active accounts on the big ones like Facebook and Twitter is really important. There are dozens of other social media sites like StumbleUpon and Delicious that can also be of benefit if they fit what you’re doing, and let’s not forget video sites like YouTube. Having all these accounts active shows more places online where you can be found and that will cause Google to give more credit to your main website. This is also an important step for building long-term authority.

Quality links for SEO purposes
Backlinking has changed drastically over the last several updates. Getting good backlinks is harder than ever, and many backlinks either don’t give any juice to sites anymore or they’re even harmful to SEO efforts. Social media backlinks might not be considered “strong,” but they are acceptable backlinks and let no one kid you – they still matter when it comes to ranking in Google’s search results. Getting some safe branded backlinks or safe URL backlinks will definitely help your SEO causes.

In addition to the basic social media links, they also have the advantage of letting you link to inner pages of your website or blog. This is critical for long term optimization of your site. Every new post can go up on Facebook, get mentioned on Twitter, or a mention on many other social media accounts. This allows for the building up of inner page authority, which will make all your internal linking that much more effective, as well.

Why YouTube is so important to your efforts!
YouTube gets overlooked way too often when talking about both social media and SEO. There are several ways that YouTube can benefit your site, and it’s important to remember that YouTube is owned by Google, which is why any backlink from them will get some great attention from the search engine, and because they like video so much, your YouTube videos (which of course should advertise your website) will very likely start ranking for higher traffic keywords and terms – maybe even above your own site.

YouTube videos are also important for another reason: you can embed them onto your own posts and that will keep visitors on your website longer. This reduces the bounce rate, which is a major part of how websites and blogs are ranked in the search engine results.

In conclusion
Having a healthy social media profile is important for any website or blog that you want to get attention to. It’s also the safest way to get important backlinks that can help your rankings in addition to giving you a degree of authority that will only further help your efforts over time.