Social media

Social networks are a great source of new readers for your content, which in turn may have an indirect effect on search performance. However, most major social networks specifically prevent search engines from using links from them in their algorithms, including:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Pinterest
• Instagram

In addition, Google have specifically stated (most recently in 2015) that there is no direct impact on search rankings from a presence on social networks.

Despite this, there is good correlation between social performance of content and its subsequent rankings. Some of this will be because more popular sites tend to also attract more links, but there is also a useful “indirect” effect of prominence on social networks in that the potentially large numbers of viewers of your content may also link to  you in ways that will count for search.

So, your efforts on networks such as these should be focused on connecting with the audiences on such sites, increasing the number of readers for your content – and not on the idea of benefit from the fact of having a link.