There are three things to be aware of when thinking of your google ranking when using social media: Your links, content, and the google algorithm, Rank Brain.

You know that social media is important to business and you know that virtually no business operates without them. Social media has become a day-to-day event. People wake up and look at their phones, get out of bed and open their laptops. The world has taken a turn for the virtual, and to stay ahead your world needs to keep up.

But, just how much does social media matter to Google search engine rankings?

This depends, because Googles algorithms are constantly fluctuating to keep up with the ever-growing source of information and new queries being typed. Rankbrain, Google’s machine learning A.I., introduced in 2015, refines search queries to find the most relevant pages. This information doesn’t seem very useful in its apparent obviousness, but there is good news. On March 24, Andrey Lipattsev, a Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, revealed two of the top ranking factors for search engine optimisation, says the Search Engine Journal. Qualified as the top three most important factors (in no order of importance):

Links: Be sure to link back to your and your affiliates websites, as well as citing other webpages you have used to increase the odds of Google adding your profile to the ranks. Be careful with what Google calls “link-stuffing.” If you link too many times back to your website in one post, then you may be flagged, hurting search results.

Content: The key here is having quality and unique content with valuable information you can’t easily find elsewhere. Quality isn’t enough on its own; you’ll need to research popular search keywords to help optimise the results. There are great resources on the web that can help you, like Search Engine Land.

RankBrain: To better use RankBrain, one must understand RankBrain. This is difficult, considering the lack of information released on it. What is certain is that RankBrain will be changing the search engine optimisation game. It’s ability to learn and manipulate phrases will only better help your chances in search engine optimisation (SEO) if you are using the two factors above. AdvancedWebRanking.com has a great article to help you understand the inner workings of the ‘brain.’

This information may seem obvious to some, but with this extra knowledge into how Google functions, you can make the best from your social media use.

If you find yourself curious of what else you can do to get the most from social media, then contact us and we’ll be happy to see what we can do to help. Just remember, if you are posting without specific content or links, even with a heavy fan base, Google could overlook you (not to undermine the importance of a fanbase). If you follow the 3 factors Google has mentioned for SEO, then you will be ahead of the game when it comes to social media!