The importance of social signals for SEO is constantly increasing. If people like and share your content, that is a clear indication for search engine algorithms that you are publishing quality content that people love. Find out how social signals influence SEO, and how you can influence social signals

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How Do ‘Social Signals’ Benefit Your
Website & Using Multiple Forms To
Attract Traffic
0:13 – What are the 3 big social media trends Google is looking at now?
1:41 – Benefiting indirectly from social media networks: ranking, bounce rate, popularity
3:04 – Why online business owners should not ignore traditional marketing
3:56 – Spreading your wings to more than just one traffic source
Hi, Fiona Lewis here from Super Savvy Business with this week’s SEO & Traffic news update.
0:13 – What are the 3 big social media trends Google is looking at now?
As a lot of my followers know, I went to the Google headquarters in Australia, about 4
weeks ago. And when I spoke to Nick Leeder, we spoke about the 3 big trends that Google is
really paying a lot of attention to. And one of those things was social signals, social media.
I’ve had a few people ask me: ‘What does this actually mean?’ – so I thought it would be a
good idea to share that with you today in our video.
There are 5 main things that can take place within social media itself or your website which
have a direct correlation to how your website ranks and the sort of traffic that you get. The
first one is the amount of likes that you get on your brand page and then from there what
stems from that is the amount of shares and comments within that page. That covers
Facebook.
The other types of signals that Google are paying attention to are Tweets and the amount
of followers that you have. So it’s really important even if Twitter isn’t something that you
personally like (I know it was something that took me a very long time to decide to get
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involved in Twitter), but Google are paying attention to how many people are following you
on your brand page and then how many people are tweeting with your hash tag.
Of course, let’s not leave out G+, Google’s own formal social media. Google are definitely
paying attention to the amount of people that have you and your brand within their
circles.
1:41 – Benefiting indirectly from social media networks: ranking, bounce rate, popularity
So that covers the direct correlations to Social Media and the social signals that Google are
paying attention to. But there are some indirect follow-ons from that.
For example, if a lot of people are sharing your content and talking about it, then it is more
likely that people will find your content; therefore, more people will visit your site. Now, the
indirect benefit of that of course is that the more traffic you have to your site the more
chances you have of ranking well for particular keywords.
The next thing I’ll touch on is that if people are familiar with your brand and what you stand
for, then you stand a much better chance of having a lower bounce rate. People are more
likely to stay on your website for longer and there is a lot of talk within the SEO world that
Google looks favorably on websites that are able to keep visitors there for longer periods of
time. So this is yet another indirect benefit of having good social signals.
Finally another social signal that really can really benefit you and your site from an indirect
point of view is that people are giving your brand good citations and reviews. This is
definitely something that Google does pay attention to, but, most importantly if you’re
getting reviews and citations, that’s increasing the ‘know-like-trust’ factor for your business
and your brand – which we all know is going to help you in the online world.
3:04 – Why online business owners should not ignore traditional offline marketing
The next thing I’d like to touch on for this week’s news update is the fact that I’ve been
talking a lot about good quality, fresh content and how the world of SEO is really turning
back to the idea of having a solid content marketing strategy.
But what I would also like to say is this is not the only way to get traffic to your site. Let’s not
forget some of the old fashion methods such as:
Referral marketing
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Networking
Going to live events
Forming joint venture partnerships and strategic alliances
Direct mail campaigns
All of these things are still highly effective and extremely relevant in today’s world of
business. So even if you are an online business owner, don’t ignore the offline methods of
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driving traffic to your business and getting targeted leads through into your database and
new customers as well.
3:56 – Spreading your wings to more than just one traffic source
Essentially the biggest message I can give
you is don’t just rely on one traffic source.
What works today in Google and the
Search Engine results pages isn’t
necessarily going to work tomorrow. So
make sure you spread your risk: make sure
you have multiple traffic channels that are
bringing you those targeted leads. Of
course, Google is a great source of traffic,
but let’s not forget things as:
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E-mail marketing
Video marketing
A strong press release campaign
Offline marketing (like I just mentioned)
I think that it is very easy to have at least 10 traffic channels. Imagine you have to bring 400
visitors to your site a day. It might seem a little bit daunting to think that those 400 visits all
need to come from the organic search results. But let’s imagine you have 10 different traffic
channels, each sending you 40 visits a day:
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Social media
Press releases
Video marketing
There are so many different channels you can use. That is my biggest piece of advice for this
week: spread your risk; one is a dangerous number.
I hope you’ve got great value from this video today and we will look forward to seeing you
on next week’s Super Savvy Business SEO & Traffic news update.
My name is Fiona Lewis, hope you’ll have a great week!
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