Written by: Aftab Bashir

One of the first things, social media does not directly impact search results.

Despite numerous studies and claims, there is some confusion surrounding this topic.

Social Media as Ranking Factor by Matt Cutts

In 2010, Matt Cutts, Google’s Webspam team head at the time, released a video stating, “Yes, I can confirm it.” He said, “We consider Twitter and Facebook links in ranking. Cutts argued in a subsequent video that social signals such as Twitter Follows and Facebook Likes didn’t affect rankings.

According to him, Google takes a snapshot of the moment when it crawls the web for information. However, social media is constantly updating and sending incomplete signals, so it does not provide a complete picture.

Study Shows

Numerous studies have been published since then, including this one from Semrush, which cites a CognitiveSEO study of 23M+ social shares. The discovery was that social media shares do not affect SEO rankings in any significant way.

But, as the study found, social signals generated by social sharing are useful indicators that your content is useful to your target market. You may conclude that social media links are good for SEO, but how many followers and likes you have does not affect your ranking. Don’t you think so?

Well, not too sure. Google has not announced anything on the subject recently.

In some studies, there is a correlation between shares on social media and rankings on those platforms, but the correlation is not the same as the cause. In general, correlations indicate that a website is doing a good job of producing high-quality content that is engaging audiences through both organic and social media channels.

Authority and Identity of Social Profiles

The assessment of the authority and identity of social profiles is another challenge that search engines face, which makes it difficult for them to determine how much value to give a link.

Currently, Google doesn’t consider a Facebook share equivalent to a backlink from an authority site. Social media does, however, impact SEO indirectly in other ways, such as:

Distribution of content.

Increased brand awareness.

Builds brand reputation.

Post lifespan is extended.

Boosts organic traffic and online visibility.

This combination of benefits can have a significant impact on your SEO ranking.